
Rudyaku Kipling 
By the Hon. John Collier 



[Frontispiece 



KIPLING'S SUSSEX 



BY 



R. THURSTON HOPKINS 

AUTHOR OF " RUDYARD KIPLING : A LITERARY 
APPRECIATION," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
1921 



.\V 



Printed in Great Britain by 
Wyman & Sens Ltd., London, Reading and Fahmham. 



2<-y 



" Goodfellow, Puck and goblins, 
Know more than any book. 
Down with your doleful problems, 

And court the sunny brook. 
The south-winds are quick-witted, 

The schools are sad and slow, 
The masters quite omitted 
The lore we care to know." 

Emerson's " April. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 9 

CHAPTER I 

Rambles about Burwash 21 

CHAPTER II 

NORTHIAM - - - . - 49 

CHAPTER III 

WlNCHELSEA 6l 

CHAPTER IV 
Round about Rye 69 

CHAPTER V 
Out-Lying Villages at Bexhill - - 99 

CHAPTER VI 

PEVENSEY ------ in 

CHAPTER VII 
The Long Man of Wilmington - - 125 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 

Seaford and the Valley of the Cuck- 

MERE ------- 135 

CHAPTER IX 

Newhaven as a Centre - 153 

CHAPTER X 
A Visit to Lewes 163 

CHAPTER XI 
Near Worthing 185 

CHAPTER XII 

The Sussex Downs and their Char- 
acteristics - 203 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Seal's Island 227 

CONCLUSION 

Song o' the Sussex Men - - - - 235 

APPENDIX 
Sussex Provincialisms - 243 

Index - - - - . - • - - 249 



INTRODUCTION. 

There are probably many thousands of readers 
of Rudyard Kipling who have at some time or 
other paused while reading the particular book 
that happened to be in hand at the moment and 
asked~mentally : " Just what sort of place is this 
village that Kipling mentions ? What is its life, 
what are its charms ? " The object of this slight 
study is to describe briefly these bits of Sussex 
which have served as a background for so many 
of Kipling's songs and stories. From Burwash, 
the home of Kipling, the writer will attempt to 
carry the reader in imagination, first to the Weald 
and Marsh, and then to the Downs, concerning 
which Kipling sings : — 

" I'm just in love with all these three, 
The Weald and Marsh and the Down countrie ; 
Nor I don't know which I love the most, 
The Weald or the Marsh or the white chalk coast ! " 

The notes in this book are all based on intimate 
personal knowledge. Almost every old building^ 
church or out of the way place mentioned by 
Kipling, has been examined by the writer, in the 

9 



io INTRODUCTION 

vast majority of cases during the summer of 
1920 ; and the descriptions given are based upon 
notes collected during the last twenty years. 

Warned by Mr. Hilaire Belloc's strictures on 
the modern Guide Book, I have tried to avoid 
those remarks which he finds so tedious. It will 
be recalled that Mr. Belloc has written in his 
essay, " On Getting Respected in Inns " : 

" For a Guide Book will tell you always what are the 
principal and most vulgar sights of a town ; what moun- 
tains are most difficult to climb, and, invariably, the 
exact distances between one place and another. But 
these things do not serve the End of Man. The end of 
man is Happiness, and how much happier are you with 
such a knowledge ? Now there are some Guide Books 
which do make little excursions now and then into the 
important things, which tell you (for instance) what kind 
of cooking you will find in what places, what kind of 
wine in countries where this beverage is publicly known, 
and even a few, more daring than the rest, will give a 
hint or two upon hiring mules, and upon the way that a 
bargain should be conducted, or how to fight." 

I have tried to omit all the vulgar sights, and 
have been daring enough to make little excursions 
into the things immemorial such as the qualities of 
old ale, the making of dew-ponds, the singing of 
old ballads and the universal love of Earth which 
is the first aroma of life, 



INTRODUCTION n 

Kipling shows us that the real lover is the real 
topographer, and it is in such poems as "A 
Charm " that he moves the heart in no light way : 

" Take of English earth as much 
As either hand may rightly clutch. 

Lay that earth upon thy heart, 
And thy sickness shall depart." 

It is impossible to spend a few weeks in Sussex 
without being impressed with the air of antiquity 
which pervades that county, and it seems like a 
mist half to conceal and half to light up every one 
of its bostels and valleys. It seems impossible to 
pass by any pile of stones, or any wall, or pillar, 
or gateway, without asking oneself the question : 
' Is this old, or is this new ? Is it the work of 
Roman or of Saxon ? " Sometimes one feels 
tempted to ask : " Is this the work of nature or of 
man ? " 

When the pilgrim stands in such a building as 
the old Star Inn at Alfriston, it is not merely the 
felicitous architecture, or the historic memories 
that possess him, but the spirit of the place, which 
is a subtle compound of both. A King once 
remarked about Oxford, that in it everything old 
seemed new, and everything new seemed old, 



12 INTRODUCTION 

This applies with even greater truth to Sussex. 
There is a wonderful continuity between the pre- 
sent and the past of this county. An inn where 
we find the landlord and the groom in the throes 
of the quite modern game of ping-pong, was but 
a hundred or so years ago the meeting place of 
Sussex smugglers, and still further back the same 
inn was the resort of religious pilgrims travelling 
to Chichester. We need not look beyond. 

In this short study, the reader must be satisfied 
with antiquities of a humble and homely char- 
acter ; and in bespeaking the interest of the 
reader, in favour of a few scrap ends of folk lore 
and relics of Sussex life, I shall promise to keep 
strictly within the historical limits laid down by 
Rudyard Kipling in his Sussex stories, with a 
reference here and there to the historical and 
literary associations of Sussex. 

How widely read Rudyard Kipling's books may 
be I do not know, but there is no doubt that on 
those who do read them they exert a very power- 
ful influence ; and the secret of this influence 
lies, more than in anything else, in their style. 
Now style is something far above the possession of 
a rich vocabulary or a keen ear for rhythm and it 
is primarily an intellectual quality. The first 
requisites of good style are that the writer should 



INTRODUCTION 13 

have a gift for vivid presentation, a clear vision 
of his subject and a keen perception of the 
emotional colour of words. It is on this basis 
that so much of the admirable styles of Ruskin 
and Newman are built. I venture to maintain 
that Kipling combines these fundamental elements 
of distinction in style with a genius that almost 
puts him on a level with the two great stylists I 
have mentioned. 

It is often pointed out that Kipling saw red 
during the Boer War, and since that time has not 
written with such unique beauty and power as he 
gave us in the " Jungle Stories." But I do not 
think this is true. His style has lost some of the 
early vitality — the god-energy of youth which is 
enthusiasm — but the real change has been that 
he has become a stay at home and a settled Sussex 
man. With the loss of a part of his early vitality 
and arrogance he has put behind him some of his 
faults. Lovers of Kipling cannot shut their eyes 
to the fact that some of the author's work during 
the Boer War contained much of the ill- judging 
impulsiveness of a child without its compensating 
charm. But I think Kipling has left such work 
behind him. When an inspiration comes to him 
now he takes it out for a long, cool walk round 
about the Sussex lanes, or sleeps with it beneath 



14 INTRODUCTION 

his pillow. In the early days he must have 
snatched pen and paper at once to work his idea 
up ; but often the inspiration must have worked 
Kipling up. That was when he allowed his en- 
thusiasm to steer his vessel. Mr. Desmond 
MacCarthy, writing in The New Statesman, points 
out that since Kipling settled in Sussex his work 
has been fed more than before by books and 
fancy. And it is in the regions of pure fancy that 
Kipling is happiest of all. Out of all his char- 
acters who do we remember best ? Is it Kim 
or is it Pagett, M.P. ? Is it Mowgli or Wali Dad ? 
Fancy is the deep, clear, sparkling stream which 
carries along and solves and neutralises, if not 
sweetens, in its impetuous flow life's rubbish and 
superfluities of all kinds. The Sussex tales of 
Kipling are his safe escape from the style of the 
alert tourist and the knowing journalist. The 
great difference between his early and later style 
is that latterly he has used his particularly sensi- 
tive gift for perception and observation, not to 
render things seen, but more often things dreamt, 
and the extraordinary appetite for exterior in- 
fluences has waned a little in consequence. But 
for all that the purpose of his virtuosity is exact- 
ness. The stillness and ancientry of the Sussex 
wayside cannot kill this bent in him. In the 



INTRODUCTION 15 

pages of " Rewards and Fairies," which distil and 
drip with ancient peace, he is not indifferent to 
beauty, but it takes a second place — precision and 
vigour come first. He will guide you with strong, 
firm hands to see, hear and touch and smell — how 
gloriously does he write of smells — what he 
describes as vividly as black and white printed 
matter can do it, and if he can transport the 
reader's mind with a word picture that is incon- 
sistent with an aesthetic quality, well, the cult of 
the beautiful is swept out of the way. Mr. 
Desmond MacCarthy must be quoted on the 
gripping power of Kipling's metaphors. Thus : 

" His metaphors and comparisons are chosen (and he 
uses them, like all vivid writers, perpetually), with com- 
plete disregard of their associations and overtones. To 
take an example from these letters of travel : ' There was 
never a cloud in the sky that rested on the snow-line of 
the horizon as a sapphire on white velvet.' We have all 
seen a sapphire on white velvet in a jeweller's window, 
and it calls up vividly the intense blue of the sky seen 
above a snowfield ; yet the comparison destroys at once 
the beauty of it. But here is a passage in which the 
very disregard of associations has flowered in a perfect 
phrase ; Mr. Kipling is describing a Canadian winter 
scene — deep snow is on the ground : 

' Rain makes a granulated crust over all, in which 
white shagreen the trees are faintly reflected. Heavy 
mists go up and down and create a sort of mirage, till 



i6 INTRODUCTION 

they settle and pack round the iron-tipped hills, and 
then you know how the moon must look to an in- 
habitant of it. At twilight, again, the beaten-down 
ridges and laps and folds of the uplands take on the 
likeness of wet sand — some huge and melancholy beach 
at the world's end — and when day meets night it is 
all goblin country. To westward, the last of the spent 
day — rust red and pearl, illimitable levels of shore 
waiting for the tide to turn again. To eastward, 
black night among the valleys, and on the rounded hill 
slopes a hard glaze that is not so much light as snail- 
slime from the moon.' 

" And this is by no means the finest piece of descrip- 
tion in the book ! ' A hard glaze that is not so much 
light as snail-slime from the moon — ' in that sentence 
vividness and beauty have at last blended." 

In Kipling's Sussex stories we are constantly 
feeling the sense of what Wordsworth called " the 
light that never was on sea or land," of what he 
himself calls " Time's Everlasting Beyond." The 
power to clothe that emotion in adequate words 
is a very rare gift ; let anyone who doubts that 
Kipling possesses it consider the story called 
" Dymchurch Flit " in " Puck of Pook's Hill." 
Examine the craftsmanship of the sentence in 
which he presents the Bee Boy, " who is not quite 
right in the head, though he can do anything with 
bees." And again, note the perfection of the 
compression of the character sketch of Hobden, 



INTRODUCTION 17 

a man of the soil, who scoffs at these people who 
" reads signs and sinnifications out o' birds flyin', 
stars fallin', bees hivin' and such," but who was 
careful not to offend the " People of the Hills " or 
' Pharisees," as the rustics call the fairies. 

" What do you think of it all ? " asks Tom. 

" Um — um," Hobden rumbled. " A man that 
uses fields an' shaws after dark as much as I've 
done, he don't go out of his road excep' for 
keepers." 

" But settin' that aside ? " said Tom, coaxingly. 
" I saw you throw the Good Piece out-at-doors 
just now. Do you believe or — do ye ? " 

" There was a great black eye to that tater," 
said Hobden, indignantly. 

" My little eye didn't see un, then. It looked as 
if you meant it, for — for Any One that might need 
it. D'ye believe or — do ye ? " 

To this, the wary Hobden answers : 

'If you was to say there was more things after 
dark in the shaws than men, or fur, or feather, or 
fin, I dunno as I'd go far about to call you a liar." 

Apropos of the Sussex way of speaking of 
fairies as Pharisees, I remember some years ago 
while on holiday at Pevensey, I came upon a 
woman in a cottage garden engaged in washing 
clothes, and asked her the way. 

B 



18 INTRODUCTION 

"Do many Sussex people," I asked, "still 
believe in pharisees ? " 

" I don't rightly understand what you mean, 
sir," she said. 

" I gather from certain learned writers on 
Sussex that the fairies are called pharisees in this 
district." 

" That may be," the woman made answer, 
" but I've never heard tell of it." 

" But," I declared, " you have surely heard the 
story of how the Pharisees favoured Sussex above 
the rest of old England, and would • flash their 
little green lights along the dikes at night, and 
dance on the naked roads in the naked day 
time/ " 

The woman looked at me in a strange manner, 
and shrank a little backwards. 

" For forty years have I lived here," she said, 
" and never before have I heard talk of such 
no-sense stuff. The only Pharisees I mind are 
written about in the Bible ! " 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 



Chapter I 

RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 

Burwash and the adjoining parishes are 
peculiarly the Kipling country. His home is here, 
and he has made this part of Sussex his very own 
in one of the most beautiful poems written on an 
English county. His verses on Sussex are im- 
perishable. By sheer force of their lyric genius 
they must of necessity make the author talked 
about in the same way a hundred years hence as 
Keats is talked of to-day. This poem is a perfect 
example of that immortal magic of words which is 
found at its highest in our early ballads of the 
country-side. It breathes realisation of man's 
unity with nature, which is perhaps the finest 
form of poetry. Mystery and wonder are here, 
and the authentic thrill of the soul in the presence 
of that fourth dimension which does not exist for 
the stranger : 

" So to the land our hearts we give 

Till the sure magic strike, 
And Memory, Use and Love make live 

Us and our fields alike — 

21 



22 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

That deeper than our speech and thought 

Beyond our reasons sway, 
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought 

Yearns to its fellow-clay." 

The spirit of place has possessed the poet in 
these verses ; he has tracked it to its inmost 
shrine. His love of " the wooded dim blue good- 
ness of the weald " and the " thyme that smells 
like dawn in Paradise," comes as an antidote to 
his vast and brassy imperial idea of " far-flung 
battle lines." The sense of atmosphere with 
which he informs " Sussex " recalls the passionate 
lines of Elizabeth Browning : 

" My own hills ! Are you 'ware of me my hills 
How I burn toward you ? Do you feel to-night 
The urgency and yearning of my soul 
As sleeping mothers feel the sucking babe 
And smile ? . . . Still ye go 
Your own determined, calm, indifferent way 
Toward sunrise, shade by shade, and light by light." 

Upon examining Kipling's Sussex stories, we 
find that the descriptions of scenery are in all 
cases brief, though extraordinarily effective ; they 
are not used for padding, but are used because 
they are essential to the story itself — the landscape 
is as inevitable as the unfolding of the plot. In 
the " Knife and the Naked Chalk," all the heart 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 23 

of the Downs with the little winds from sea, and 
the hum of insects in the thyme, comes to the 
reader. Dudeney, the old shepherd living in a 
flint village on the bare windy Chalk Down, tells 
the children to press their faces down and smell 
the turf : 

" That's Southdown thyme which makes our 
Southdown mutton beyond compare, and, my 
mother told me, 'twill cure anything except 
broken necks or hearts, I forget which." 

The love of the South Downs is in the old 
shepherd's blood ; he is possessed with what 
Swinburne has called " the dark unconscious 
instinct of primitive nature- worship." It is only 
on this particular soil that the shepherd can 
breathe freely, and he speaks with contempt of 
some one who went off to live " among them 
messy trees in the Weald." The more em- 
phatically Dan and Una defend the Weald with 
its brooks, where you can " paddle in hot weather," 
the more decisively does Dudeney speak of the 
dangers of brooks flooding, and the trouble which 
follows — the shifting of the sheep, and " foot- 
rot afterward." Brooks are treacherous. The 
Southdown shepherd puts his faith in dew-ponds. 

In Kipling's " Weland's Sword " we read how 
" Dan and Una go out towards the close of one 



24 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

midsummer day to act a shortened scene or two 
from the fairy portion of the " Midsummer Night's 
Dream." " The theatre lay in a meadow . . . 
A little mill-stream bent round one corner of it, 
and in the middle of the bend lay a large old fairy- 
ring of darkened grass, which was the stage." 
There are numerous fairy-rings and hag-tracks 
upon the green slopes of the Downs which will not 
fail to attract the reader's attention. It is now 
generally admitted that they originate in the 
growth of various species of fungi, but the Sussex 
shepherds believe them to be formed by the feet 
of dancing fairies, or, as they are locally called, 
Pharisees, who : 

" In their courses make that round 
In meadows and in marshes found, 
Of them so call'd the fairy ground, 
Of which they have the keeping." 

Every one who has turned the pages of " Puck 
of Pook's Hill," will call to mind the fairy verses — 
verses fluttered with memories and shadows — 
which recur hauntingly again and again, like a 
refrain of an old song : 

" Farewell, rewards and fairies, 
Good housewives now may say, 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 25 

For now foul sluts in dairies 

Do fare as well as they ; 
And though they sweep their hearths no less 

Than maids are wont to do, 
Yet who of late for cleanliness 

Finds sixpence in her shoe ? " 

Kipling was indebted to the writer of these 
verses for his title. 7 ho was the author ? Bishop 
Corbet, of Oxford, and Norwich, and the poem 
was written somewhere about 161 2. There is an 
old-world tone in such lines as these : 

" At morning and at evening both, 

You merry were and glad, 
So little care of sleep and sloth 

These pretty ladies had. 
When Tom came home from labour, 

Or Ciss to milking rose, 
Then merrily went their tabor, 

And nimbly went their toes. 

Witness these rings and roundelays 

Of theirs which still remain, 
Were footed in Queen Mary's days, 

On many a grassy plain. 
But since of late Elizabeth, 

And later James, came in, 
They never dance on any hearth 

As when the time hath bin." 

In " Dymchurch Flit," Kipling traces the 



26 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

departure of the fairies from England to " Queen 
Bess's father who had come in with his Re- 
formatories." It was because the Queen's father 
" just about tore the gizzards out of the parish 
churches " that the fairies became " turrified " 
and fled from cruel old England. Bishop Corbet 
admits their Romish tendencies : 

" By which we note the fairies 

Were of the old profession, 
Their songs were Ave Mary's, 

Their dances a procession ; 
But now, alas, they all are dead, 

Or gone beyond the seas, 
Or farther for religion fled, 

Or else they'd take their ease. 

John Aubrey, the antiquary, born in Wiltshire 
in 1626, left in his large collection of manuscripts 
some sidelights on the worthy Bishop which show 
him to be a jester of no mean rank. Aubrey says : 

" After he was a doctor of divinity, he sang ballads at 
the Crosse at Abingdon. On a market-day, he and some 
of his comrades were at the tavern by the Crosse. The 
ballad-singer complayned he had no customs — he could 
not sell his ballads. The jolly Doctor puts off his gowne, 
and puts on the ballad-singer's leathern jacket, and being 
a handsome man, and a rare full voice, he presently 
vended a great many, and had a great audience. 

" His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. 



RAMBLES ABOUT BUR WASH 27 

Stubbins was one of his cronies ; he was a jolly fat doctor, 
and a very good house-keeper. As Dr. Corbet and he 
were riding in Lob Lane in wet weather ('tis an extra- 
ordinary deepe dirty lane), the coache fell, and Corbet 
said that Dr. S. was up to his elbows in mud, and he was 
up to the elbows in Stubbins." 

Now that is an excellent jest. Prince Hal 
might have said that about the massive propor- 
tions of Falstaff ! 

Aubrey continues : 

" A.D., 1628, he was made Bishop of Oxford ; and I 
have heard that he had an admirable grave and venerable 
aspect. One time as he was confirming, the country 
people, pressing in to see the ceremonie, said he, ' Beare 
off there, or I'll confirm ye with my staff e.' Another 
time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man very 
bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, ' Some dust, 
Lushington,' to keepe his hand from slipping. ' There 
was a man with a great venerable beard ' ; said the 
bishop. ' You, behind the beard.' " 

That is quite in the London motor driver's 
caustic style when a venerable old gentleman 
wanders aimlessly in front of his five-ton lorry — 
" Here, you with the whiskers ! Out of it ! " 

Aubrey ends with the following jovial picture : 

" His chaplaine, Dr. Lushington, was a very learned 
and ingenious man, and they loved one another. The 



28 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

Bishop would sometimes take the key of the wine- 
cellar ; and he and his chaplaine would go and lock 
themselves in and be merry ; then first he layes down his 
episcopal hood, ' There layes the doctor ' ; then he puts 
off his gowne, ' There layes the bishop ' ; then 'twas 
' Here's to thee, Corbet ' ; ' Here's to thee, Lushington ! ' " 

To read a passage like this is to breathe the air 
of a more spacious and friendly era, an era when 
culture and good-fellowship still walked arm-in-arm, 
and took a bottle of wine together in some snug 
and lettered tavern. Bishops in these days do 
not go to the trouble of lamenting loss of fairies, 
they never unbend, never laugh and never say : 
" Here's to thee, Lushington ! " 

Readers of " Puck of Pook's Hill " will recollect 
the tale of the Sussex ironworks called " Hal 
o' the Draft." Hal is a mason restoring old 
Barnabas Church, and has a friend called Sebas- 
tian Cabot, from Bristol way, who is waiting for 
guns for one of the King's ships. Hal's men will 
not work, and his materials from Master Collins, 
the founder, come to hand spaulty or cracked, 
and all the guns cast for Cabot are alleged to be 
faulty. Gentle and simple, high and low, all the 
people of the village are against the church being 
re-roofed or touched, and Hal feels that the 
countryside is bewitched. However, the truth of 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 29 

the matter is discovered. The stubborn in- 
habitants are all more or less concerned in a little 
gun-running, and the church is being used as a 
warehouse and hiding place for Cabot's cannons 
until an opportunity to place them aboard Andrew 
Barton's ship occurs. 

The mention of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton 
in " Hal o' the Draft " brings us within hailing 
distance of a noble pirate and a noble singer. We 
recall how Lord Howard's marksmen brought 
down all those whom this bold pirate sent up the 
masttree " to let the beams fall," and at last Sir 
Andrew, encased in armour, climbed up himself, 
and Horsly, the " bowman rare " from Yorkshire, 
shot in vain : 

' ' Then Horsly spied a privie place, 
with a perfect eye in a secret part, 
His arrow swiftly flew apace, 

and smote Sir Andrew to the heart. 
' Fight on, fight on, my merry men all, 

a little I am hurt yet not slaine, 
I'll but lie downe and bleed awhile 
and come and fight with you againe. 

And do not,' saith he, ' feare English Rogues 
and of your Foes stand in no awe, 

But stand fast by S. Andrewes crosse, 
until you heare my whistle blow.' 



30 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

They never heard his whistle blow 
which made them all full sore afraid : 

Then Horsly said, ' My Lord, aboard, 
for now Sir Andrew Barton's dead.' " 

But we must return to the story. 

Hal rides to Brightling and tells Sir John 
Pelham of the gun-running, who comes with thirty 
stout knaves, and with much of the guile peculiar 
to " silly Sussex," adroitly hands the guns over to 
Cabot without finding cause to quarrel with 
Master John Collins, the founder, or to convict 
those associated with him in his treasonable traffic 
in cannon. 

The reader of this story will have no difficulty 
in connecting " St. Barnabas " with Burwash 
Parish Church, which has an early Norman tower 
and a thirteenth century chancel. On the font, 
which is fifteenth century, will be seen the buckle 
of Sir John Pelham of Brightling, who is of the 
same family as the Lord Pelham mentioned in the 
"Ballad of Minepit Shaw." The old Bell Inn, 
opposite the church, is also referred to by Kipling 
in " Hal o' the Draft," and we learn that Ticehurst 
Will and other gun-runners " wagged their sinful 
heads " over their cups of ale in this place of 
entertainment. 

" The Bell " deserves a visit. Here the rooms 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 31 

smell of antiquity, and the great oak ceiling- 
beams scowl at the impertinent light admitted by 
windows which are not quite in keeping with the 
ancientry of the house in general. Those windows 
have been there for close on a hundred years, but 
they seem modern to beams which have been in 
position three hunrded. The landlady, Miss 
Farley, will tell you that the house has been held 
by her family for nearly a hundred years, and one 
may take Lamberhurst beer in the low bar with 
much neighbourly conversation. I learnt that 
Burwash is pronounced " Berrish " in the district, 
and that an old matrimonial rhyme runs like this : 

" To love and to cherish 
From Battle to Berrish, 
And round about Robertsbridge home." 

Yes, the Bell Inn is that kind of house that 
receives a man like a friend. There is an open 
chimney in the smoking-room, and a spacious 
fireplace in which beech logs lend their pleasant 
fragrance to the flames during the long winter 
evenings. 

A delightful old kitchen at the back deserves to 
be mentioned. Notice the brobdingnagian copper 
boiler hoisted up to the low ceiling, which is 
reminiscent of the days when the vestry meetings 



32 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

at Burwash Church would occasionally end in a 
little beefsteak and kidney pudding dinner at 
" The Bell." 

It is interesting to note, too, that many people 
in Burwash still remember the Rev. J. Cocker 
Egerton, author of " Sussex Folk and Sussex 
Ways," and rector for many years. At the Bell 
Inn I met the sexton of the village church, who 
had called in for his ale after Sunday morning 
service. He was very communicative and recol- 
lected the days when the Rev. Egerton played the 
fiddle at the choir practice way back in 1870. 
" He had a hem o' trouble with the boys," the 
old man drawled, " and the only way he could 
make 'em behave reasonable like was to crack 
'em on the head with his fiddle stick. He was 
odd-fashioned, no bounds, was the old rector." 

My old friend the sexton showed me the church, 
with its quaint porch paved with curiously carven 
gravestones, and one actually steps over a 
sixteenth century brass before passing up the 
aisle. There are one or two rough stone blocks 
in the churchyard which tradition says were 
planted over the graves of those smitten down 
with plague in 1666. " I never lay any spade 
to turf near them," the old sexton rumbled, 
" best to let them pesky old bones alone." 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 33 

In the wall, at the end of the south aisle, may 
be seen the iron slab of the fourteenth century, 
mentioned in Kipling's story, " The Conversion of 
St. Wilfrid." Here Dan and Una met the saint 
of Sussex. The children called this part of the 
church Panama Corner, because of the long-tailed 
Longobardic characters on the cast-iron slab 
which read : Orate p(ro) annema J hone Coline. 
The inscription is much injured by long exposure 
to the tread of feet. 

The present Vicar of Burwash believes the slab 
records the death of a priest. In any case it is 
an interesting relic of Sussex iron manufacture, 
and it is quite possible that it might commemorate 
the death of an ancestor of the Collinses, iron- 
masters here and in the adjoining parishes. 

Members of this family, Master John Collins, 
and his brother Tom, master at Stocken's Forge, 
are mentioned by Kipling in " Hal o' the Draft," 
as being concerned in gun-founding and gun- 
running. 

Pook's Hill, called Puck Hill by the people of 
the village, is in Burwash Weald. The word 
Puck belongs to the same series as the Irish 
Phooka, German Spuk, and our modern words 
spook, bogie, and bugbear. Bayle in his dic- 
tionary dated 1755, tells us that " A bug " is an 

c 



34 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

" imaginary monster to frighten children with/' 
and in a scarce old version of the ninety-first Psalm 
we find the words " from the pestilence that 
walketh in darkness written as " from the bug 
that walketh in darkness." In Shakespeare we 
find the word occasionally. The " Taming of the 
Shrew " contains the line : " Tush ! Tush ! fear 
(frighten) boys with bugs," and in " The Winter's 
Tale " : " The bug which you would frighten me 
with, I seek." In the " Faerie Queen " one 
recalls Spenser's lines : 

" Each trembling leaf and whistling wind they hear, 
As ghastly bug their hair on end doth rear." 

" The bug " is none other than a variant of 
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, the merry wanderer 
of the night, bequeathed to us by our Anglo- 
Saxon forefathers, and depicted in Shakespeare's 
" Midsummer Night's Dream " as " rough, knurly- 
limbed, faun faced and shock-pat ed, a very 
Shetlander among the fairies." 

Burwash is spelled Burgheress in records dated 
1 291. Not far from the village southwards is 
Rudyard Kipling's house, called " Batemans." 
Over the doorway a date stone proclaims that 
the building was raised in the year 1634, but in 
Horsefield's " Sussex " we are told it was erected 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 35 

in 1620. It is surrounded by most charming 
woods, and the adjoining lands have as much 
seclusion and jungle mystery as any lover of 
nature could desire. 

I was told in the village, the house derives its 
name from the fact that a grasping builder so 
abated his men's wages, that it was always 
referred to by them as " Batemans," and the 
name endured. 

There are some fine oak-panelled rooms in the 
house, and it changed hands many times before 
Rudyard Kipling became lawfully seized and 
possessed of it. 

A Mr. John Britain, who lived at " Batemans," 
died and was buried in Burwash in 1707. In 
" Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways " Cocker Egerton 
tells us that the history of "\Batemans " is very 
hazy, and the date over the door is about the only 
fact that is not questioned. He also mentions 
that the house contained some old Sussex " dogs " 
(called variously "brand-irons," " and-irons," or 
" end-irons "), bearing the date 1585, but they 
were taken away by Mr. Stevenson when he left 
the farm about 1873. 

It appears that Pook Hill is the old name for 
a farm and farm house not far from Burwash 
Weald, and bordering on Dallington Forest, Lord 



36 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

Ashburnham's property. The Vicar of Burwash 
kindly gave me this information, but he points 
out that the Pook's Hill Farm has now degener- 
ated into some modern name. 

Burwash stands three miles to the north of 
Brightling and two miles west of Etchingham, 
on the parallel ridge, which diverges from the 
main one some distance from the west. In the 
valley between flows the Dudwell, an affluent of 
the Rother. It is here that we must look for most 
of the topographical hints which Kipling throws 
out in " Puck of Pook's Hill." The hill itself is 
not given on the map, but I think the lower slope 
of the hill, south of the valley, may be determined 
upon as the " bare, fern-covered slope " men- 
tioned by Kipling as running from the " far side 
of the mill stream to a dark wood." This is the 
High Wood and is probably the " Far Wood " to 
which Una went when Dan came to grief over his 
Latin, and was kept in. Here we may seek the 
children's " important watch tower," which looks 
down on Pook's Hill and " all the turns of the 
brook as it wanders out of Willingford Woods, 
between hop gardens, to old Hobden's cottage at 
the Forge." Still further south is Brightling 
Beacon. 

Two fords over the Dudwell are mentioned by 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 37 

Kipling with half a league between them, and, of 
course, they are now bridged over. The higher 
Willingford Bridge — Weland's Ford, in the Puck 
stories — leads to Burwash and the lower by Dud- 
well Mill to Burwash. The mill mentioned in the 
opening of " Hal o' the Draft," a place where rats 
scuttle in the rafters, and the attic possesses 
intriguing trap-doors and beams with inscriptions 
about floods and sweethearts, lies between the two 
bridges, but nearer the lower ford. 

From Brightling as from the minaret of a 
mosque, one may look out upon the landscape, 
sleeping all fair and serenely in the sunlight upon 
broad reaches of meadow-land dotted by browsing 
cattle — upon close-clinging branches hung with a 
myriad leaves — upon the shimmering and shining 
waters of the far-off sea — and many gabled manor 
house, and quiet hamlet — upon hill and dale, and 
grove, and garden — a goodly picture. To the 
north and east spreads the Weald of Kent and 
Sussex, rich in a thousand changes of light and 
shade ; to the south-west rises the long bold line 
of the glorious Sussex downs ; to the south gleams 
and glitters the Channel, bounded in the distance 
by a low bank of clouds which denotes the position 
of the French coast. 

The old mill by Dudwell Bridge will not fail to 



38 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

arrest attention. It appears in " Below the Mill 
Dam " in Kipling's " Traffics and Discoveries," 
and in several of the Puck stories. Alas ! the 
old order changes ! It is with feelings of genuine 
regret that we find a turbine in place of the old 
wheel which had clacked and ground her corn 
" ever since Domesday Book." The turbine 
now drives the electric light plant for Kipling's 
house which is only a few yards distant. It was 
in this mill that the wheel objected to being con- 
sidered mechanically after she had been painted 
by five Royal Academicians ! 

The Dudwell which flows at the back of " Bate- 
mans," supplies the water to the mill, and often in 
the winter time invades the gardens and lower 
rooms of the houses. The farmer who once had 
the Dudwell at the bottom of his garden, has more 
often, in days of flood, his garden at the bottom of 
the Dudwell. Such a flood is described in the 
story, " Friendly Brook " (A Diversity of Crea- 
tures) . 

The mill is also faithfully described in " Hal o' 
the Draft," and Kipling has not exaggerated its 
beauty. It is a curious and interesting building, 
with its steep roof, and red tiled walls, and 
diamond-leaded windows with curious iron hasps. 
We pass through a gate at the side which leads up 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 39 

to the mill-dam, and here some ancient brick 
stairs, covered with yellow stonecrop, lead down 
to gloomy underground rooms in the mill. The 
attic lighted by a foot-square " Duck window/* 
still looks across to Little Lindens Farm, and the 
spot where Jack Cade was killed. Here we find 
the attic ladder which the children Dan and Una 
called the mainmast-tree out of the ballad of Sir 
Andrew Barton. May the old mill long remain so ! 

If the stream is followed to the bridge at 
Willingford, a lane leads up to the Wheel Inn, 
where the road to Burwash and Etchingham is 
gained. 

From the Wheel Inn we retrace our steps to the 
village, passing Kipling's Lane which leads down 
to Batemans on the way. 

The village of Burwash will be known to many 
through the Rev. J. Cocker Egerton's studies in 
the " Wealden formation of human nature." His 
stories of local astuteness are too good to pass 
over. In many of them we trace the same solid 
philosophy which John Collins, the forge master, 
uses so successfully in wriggling out of the hang- 
, man's rope in " Hal o' the Draft." Many people 
call this particular Sussex method of reasoning 
" stupidity," but the countryman often wins 
through in his slow way. The Burwash man, who, 



40 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

when the vicar was about to reprove him on 
finding him a little in liquor, asked with concern 
why it was that he felt more religious when he 
was in his cups than any other time, is an example 
of Sussex " silliness." 

Another Burwash man expressing himself on his 
doubts of the existence of political honesty gives 
us this scrap of philosophy : — 

"I be a miller, and I've got rats, and I keep 
cats, and one day I look into a place under my 
mill, and there I sees cats and rats all feeding 
together out of one trough at my expense." 

It was also a Burwash miller, who was asked by 
a lawyer, who enjoyed a joke outside of the limits 
of his own profession, how the saying got about 
that there was never but one miller who found his 
way to heaven. 

" Oh Lor ! " replied the miller, " I will give 
that riddle up ! But shall I tell you how it was 
that he bid (stopped) when he was there ? Because, 
sir, there was never a lawyer to e-ject him." 

Mr. Egerton tells of the half-wit of Burwash, 
Mike Ambleton, who when tested as to his power 
of judgment by the offer of a choice of either a 
half-sovereign or a half-crown said, " Mike won't 
be covetous. Mike'll be content with the little 
one." It was the same Mike, who when one of his 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 41 

tormentors in the village died, danced on the 
fresh turfed grave shouting, " Got ye now, got ye 
now ! " 

You will learn in the " Smuggler's Song " all 
about the gentlemen who must have often passed 
*' Batemans " in their trapesings with good liquor 
between the coast and the capital. In those days 
everyone sided with the smugglers, both on the 
coast and inland ; and it is said that a certain 
worthy parson being somewhat uneasy about his 
right to retain a cask of brandy which, with many 
others, had been hidden in his own church tower, 
was somewhat consoled by one of the gentlemen, 
who pinned the following text to it : 

" Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his 
soul when he is hungry." Proverbs vi. 30. 

A Burwash woman has told us that as a child, 
after saying her prayers, she was often packed to 
bed early with the strict injunction : :f Now mind 
if the gentlemen come along, don't you look out 
of the window." To look at a smuggler when he 
was engaged in the great game was strictly against 
true Sussex tradition. People had to turn towards 
the wall when they passed by, so that they could 
truthfully declare that, as they had not seen the 
gentlemen, it was impossible to identify them. 



42 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

Another native of Burwash has recorded that his 
grandfather's family, which consisted of fourteen 
sons, were all " brought up to be smugglers." 
Cocker Egerton also related a good story of a 
Sussex parson who feigned illness all one Sunday 
in order to keep his church closed on a cargo of 
contraband which had been hurriedly lodged in 
the pews to evade the revenue men. 

It has been said that the true crest of the Sussex 
men is a pig couchant, with the motto, " I wunt 
be druv," and we have all heard of the following 
couplet : 

" You may push and you may shuv 
But I'm if I'll be druv." 

Mr. E. V. Lucas, in his book on Sussex, has 
told us how the bellringers of Burwash refused to 
ring the bells when George IV., then Prince of 
Wales, passed through that village on his return 
from a visit to Sir John Lade at Etchingham. 
The independent and stubborn inhabitants, when 
asked for a reason, declared that the bells had 
clashed most riotously when the First Gentleman 
in Europe had passed that way before, and not 
even a little ale had been served out to them, 
and that they did not mean to toil again for 
nothing. 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 43 

My notes on smuggling in this neighbourhood 
would be incomplete without mention of the 
" Hawkhurst Gang." Although they took their 
title from an inland town, they ranged the coast 
from Dover to Brighton, and at times extended 
their operations still further westward. Previous 
to their being dispersed, this band reigned supreme. 
They rode in troops to the seaside to fetch their 
goods, and carried them away triumphantly, 
daring King George's men who were sent to awe 
them. The whole country became incensed against 
this gang in the end, and most of the members of 
it were apprehended. There were in all twenty- 
two who were executed, a special assize being held 
at Chichester to try the offenders. The whole of 
the prisoners were found guilty. One of the gang 
named Jackson, escaped hanging by dying the 
night before the day of execution. A year or two 
ago there was in existence a stone which bore the 
following inscription : 

" Near this place was buried the body of William 
Jackson, a proscribed smuggler, who was with William 
Carter, attainted for the murder of William Galley, a 
custom-house officer, and who likewise was together 
with Benjamin Tayner, John Cobby, John Hammond, 
Richard Mills, the elder, and Richard Mills, the younger, 
his son, attainted for the murder of Daniel Chater ; but 
dying a few hours after sentence of death was 



44 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

pronounced upon him, he thereby escaped the punish- 
ment which the heinousness of his complicated crimes 
deserved, and which was the next day most justly 
inflicted upon his accomplices. As a memorial and a 
warning to this and succeeding generations this stone 
is erected." 



Two others of the gang were afterwards taken 
and tried at Newgate, and both ordered to be 
hung in chains. They were named Fairhall and 
Kingsmill. They behaved, it is said, most im- 
pudently during their trial, and were frequently 
reprimanded, but to no purpose. Fairhall is 
reported to have said " he did not value being 
hanged," and before his trial asked for a pipe and 
tobacco and a bottle of wine, adding, " as he was 
not to live long he might as well live well the 
short time he was in the world." One Perin, a 
member of the gang, was ordered to be hung and 
then buried, and Fairhall remarked to this man, 
who was lamenting the harsher sentence on his 
comrades, " We shall be hanging up in the sweet 
air when you are rotting in your grave." He was 
evidently of a philosophic turn. 

Poaching is in the blood of the Burwash people, 
and Kipling's Hobden, a man who knows and 
loves the earth, is a splendid study in the 
psychology of the man of the soil. 



RAMBLES ABOUT BURWASH 45 

We will take one look at Hobden. The word 
picture is from Kipling's poem " The Land " : 

" Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that 

flies, 
Would I lose his large, sound counsel, miss his keen 

amending eyes." 
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, 

engineer, 
And if flagrantly a poacher — 'tain't for me to interfere." 

The Sussex man's liking for beer is part of his 
nature. He talks of ale as a thing apart, and to 
remind him of the days " when ale was ale in- 
deed " is to send him into a sort of ecstasy. But 
he finds it intolerable to ever think of a man being 
drunk. When a Sussex man has taken a great 
deal too much he will perhaps admit he " had a 
little beer." The habitual drunkard is spoken 
of as a man who takes a " half-a-pint other- 
while " ; the man who is " none the better for what 
he took " must be considered in a very intoxicated 
state ; and the policeman who finds a man in a 
state of abject helplessness gives evidence that 
" he was noways tossicated but only concerned a 
leetle in liquor." 

From Burwash we may walk to Etchingham. 
The village is one mile distant from the station. 
Etchingham Church is one of the most interesting 



46 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

in the county. Its general character is Decorated, 
with a massive square tower, a staircase turret, 
a roof of unusual height, and windows ornamented 
with rich flamboyant tracery. The chancel is 
noticeable for its length, its south door, and 
Early English font. The founder of the church 
was one Sir William de Etchingham, to whom there 
is a brass in the chancel (much injured), and an 
inscription which may be compared with that on 
" the Black Prince's tomb at Canterbury." An 
enriched canopy overhangs a brass to a later 
Sir William (d. 1444), his wife, and son, and the 
south aisle is adorned with an Etchingham 
helmet. 

The war memorial cross before the church was 
unveiled by Rudyard Kipling in April, 1920, 
who remarked that it " occupied the very place it 
should do, right in the centre of the church 
approach — for surely it was a small thing that as 
they approached the House of God, they should 
pause awhile and remember the sacrifice." 



NORTHIAM 



Chapter II 

NORTHIAM 

In the story of " Gloriana," in "■ Rewards and 
Fairies," there is a strong Kipling personality- 
present in every line. His aesthetic appreciation 
of what I call " sacramental " things — landscape 
and the fourth dimension of the English country- 
side which is charged with most ancient magic — 
is so subtly blended with his knowledge of English 
history that the picture he gives us of Queen Bess 
at a banquet beneath Brickwall Oak is quite 
remarkably vivid and concrete. He gives you not 
merely one aspect of Queen Elizabeth, but the 
impression her memory produces on his whole 
personality. Kipling makes Puck introduce 
Queen Bess to Dan and Una, and she tells with 
that terrible gift of familiarity, which enabled her 
to retain the immense hold she had on the affection 
of her subjects, how two young sprigs of the best 
blood of Sussex quarrelled over which of the two 
she had picked out for her special favour. In the 
end they go to " certain death by certain shame 

49 P 



50 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

attended " for her honour and undertake a 
voyage to Florida to keep an eye on Philip of 
Spain's ships and : 

"... pass into eclipse, 
Her kiss upon their lips — 
Even Belphoebe's, whom they gave their lives for." 

Consider the way Kipling brings out all the 
daring contradictions, all the great possibilities, 
all the weaknesses, all the cruelty of Elizabeth as 
she tells the children how she danced Philip of 
Spain out of a brand-new kingdom at Brickwall 
Hall. 

Kipling does not write about the less amiable 
side of Elizabeth, but the story " Gloriana " casts 
a shadow which tells us that there is a certain 
meanness in her character in spite of all, and we at 
once hark back to her jealousy, which was a 
mania with her. So great was this that no young 
cavalier was ever supposed to have the right to 
make a marriage for love ; it was felt to be a 
derogation from that idolatry of the Queen which 
she claimed as a monopoly. That is why Leicester 
had to keep quiet his marriage with Amy Robsart, 
and perhaps also, to sanction her burial in a tomb 
as well as in a castle. Raleigh dared to fall in 
love and to marry Elizabeth Throgmorton. This 



NORTHIAM 51 

meant a brief imprisonment in the Tower for him, 
and expulsion from the Court for his poor bride. 
It throws a significant light on the kind of stuff 
Elizabeth was ready to swallow to read the letters 
to her which Raleigh judiciously allowed to reach 
her eyes : 

" How can I live alone in prison, while she (the Queen) 
is afar off ? I, who was wont to behold her riding like, 
Alexander, fair hair about her pure cheeks, like any 
seraph, sometimes sitting in the shade, like a goddess, 
sometimes playing on the lute like Orpheus." 

But Kipling reminds us that at least while her 
men adventured all over the world she toiled in 
England that they might find a safe home to come 
back to. Another side of the kaleidoscope of her 
character is to be found in the well-known story 
of her dealings with the Windsor carter. When- 
ever the Queen desired to go from Windsor to 
some other palace, the carts and horses in the 
neighbourhood of Windsor were " impressed " for 
the Royal service. The Queen changed her mind 
constantly, with the result that a Windsor carter, 
who had been ordered to provide carriage for a 
part of the Royal wardrobe, came to Windsor 
Castle once to find the Queen had changed her 
day of departure ; came a second time to find the 



52 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

same change ; and coming a third time, and 
finding once more another change of the Royal 
mind, made the historic exclamation, as he clapped 
his thigh, " Now I see that the Queen is a woman 
as well as my wife ! " Elizabeth, standing at an 
open window, happened to hear the observation. 
" What villain is this ? " she asked laughing, and 
directed the attendant to give him three angels 
" to stop his mouth." 

In the poem, " The Looking Glass," which 
follows the story " Gloriana," Kipling shows us 
Elizabeth, who has 'gun like Macbeth, to weary 
o' the world ; as she well might. She fears to peer 
at her own reflection in the looking glass " that can 
always hurt a lass more than any ghost there is 
or any man there was." Here is what the mirror 
would have reflected at this date : 

" Next came the Queen, very majestic ; her face 
oblong, fair, but wrinkled ; her eyes small, yet black and 
pleasant ; her nose a little hooked ; her lips narrow, and 
her teeth black. She had in her ears two pearls with very 
rich drops ; she wore false hair, and that red ; and she 
had a necklace of exceedingly fine jewels. Her hands 
were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither tall 
nor low ; her air was stately ; her manner of speaking 
mild and obliging." 

When the reader arrives at the village green at 



NORTHIAM 53 

Northiam, he will still see Queen Elizabeth's Oak 
in decay and upheld by chains. It was here the 
Queen was waited upon at a banquet by the best 
blood of Sussex — the Frewens, Courthopes, Fullers 
and Husseys. And the little green shoes (ah ! 
those awfully tiny things ! so reminiscent of the 
vanity and capriciousness of good Queen Bess ! ) 
are still preserved in a glass case at the Frewens' 
house at Brickwall. They are of green damask 
silk, with heels two and a half inches high and 
pointed toes. It will be remembered that Dan 
tells Gloriana that they are " as little as doll's 
shoes " in Kipling's story. 

For a description of Northiam, I cannot do 
better than refer the reader to A. L. Frewen's 
" History of Brickwall, Northiam and Brede " 
(1909). Northiam is a charming village, and is 
just on the borders of Kent : 

" O rare Norgen, thou dost far exceed 
Beckley, Peasmarsh, Udimore and Brede." 

The mansion of the Frewens, called Brickwall, 
is a fine timbered Elizabethan house, with some 
additions made under Charles II. Here the 
pilgrim can inspect portraits of "Archbishop 
Accepted Frewen," by Loest ; " Stephen, the 
Alderman," Loest ; " Lady Guildford," Holbein '> 



54 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

" Rector Frewen," Mark Gerrard ; and " Lord 
Keeper Coventry and his fair wife," by Jansen. 
Here, too, is a curious finger-organ, by Schmidt ; 
a wheel barometer, made use of by Archbishop 
Frewen ; the ruthless Oxenbridge's spur ; and 
Queen Elizabeth's green silk shoes. The Church, 
dedicated to St. Mary, has a Norman tower, 
crowned by a turret with a stone spire. There are 
brasses for Robert Penford, rector, d. 1518, and 
Nicholas Tufton, d. 1538. The mausoleum of the 
Frewen family was erected in 1846, from Smirke's 
designs ; the stained-glass window is by Wille- 
ment, and the bust of A. Frewen by Behnes. 

The present rector, Rev. A. Frewen Aylward, 
is a descendant in direct line of John Frewen, 
rector of Northiam in 1585. There are references 
to this family in Kipling's " Gloriana." Also in 
this story Gloriana gave the Norgem parson a 
text for his sermon — " Over Edom have I cast out 
my shoe." As Queen Elizabeth was a little hazy 
in regard to the parson's name, I consulted the 
list of Rectors which is hung up in Northiam 
Church tower. I found that in 1576 the incum- 
bency was held by John Withers or Withens, but 
the spelling of the name was uncertain — hence 
Elizabeth's haziness, and Rudyard Kipling's 
uncertainty ! 



NORTHIAM 55 

The following song by the Rev. A. Frew en 
Aylward, which is now printed for the first time, 
is a charming tribute to Sussex : 

SUSSEX FOLK. 



Some praise the sturdy northland 
Whose sons are tall and strong, 
Some make the busy midland 
The burthen of their song : 
And east is east, and west is west, 

Each with its separate spell, 
But the land for me skirts the southern sea, 
And the praise of its folk I'd tell. 

Clay of the weald, chalk of the down 
Breeze from the boisterous sea, 
These are the things make Sussex men 
The sort of folk they be ! 

ii 

You may see them pull the hop poles, 

You may see them guide the plough, 
You may see them launch the lugger 

While the waves break o'er her bow ; 
And when the war cloud gathered 
And the country called for aid, 
Men of the shire — son, brother and sire — 
Stood ready and undismayed ! 
Men of the marsh and moorland, 

Sons of the shore or sea, 
Heaven keep you still, through good or ill, 
The sort of folk you be. 



56 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

in 

And if the men of Sussex 

Be brave and strong and true, 
Their matrons and their maidens 

Have many a virtue too. 
Mothers and wives and sweethearts 

No comelier can be seen, 
Than those who grace some lordly place, 
Or reign as village queen ! 
Fragrance of flower and hop-bine, 

Beauties of sky and sea, 
Make Sussex maids and matrons, 
The sort of folk they be ! 

I can vouch for the fragrance of the hop-bine. 
The last visit I paid to Northiam fell on Michael- 
mas-Day and the air was heavy with the rich, 
healthful, bitter smell of the pockets of hops. 
Puck, in "Hal o' the Draft," says: "Hops— 
they're an herb of Mars.'* We say : 

" Turkeys, Heresy, Hops and Beer 
Came into England all in one year.' 

This couplet is a variant of the old saying : 

" Turkeys, carp, hops, pickerel, and beer, 
Came into England all in one year." 

However, they are both erroneous. Pike, or 
pickerel, were the subject of legal regulations in the 
time of Edward I. Dame Juliana Barnes, in her 



NORTHIAM 57 

" Boke of St. Alban's " (1496) mentions carp as an 
agreeable dish. Turkeys were unknown till 1524, 
but I have seen an entry in the " Customs Roll of 
Great Yarmouth " (1453) regarding the trans- 
porting of " hoppes." 



WINCHELSEA 



Chapter III 

WINCHELSEA 

On entering the decayed but interesting old 
town of Winchelsea, the first thing that strikes 
the stranger is the regular, geometrical plan on 
which the place is laid out. The streets are broad ; 
the houses are built in blocks or squares. John 
Wesley, who preached his last open-air sermon 
under an ash tree in the churchyard here, de- 
scribes it as " beautifully situated on the top of a 
steep hill, and regularly built in broad streets, 
crossing each other, and encompassing a very 
large square, in the midst of which was a large 
church, now in ruins " ; while in Evelyn's Diary, 
under the date of 1652, is the following record : 
" I walked over (from Rye) to survey the ruins 
of Winchelsea, that ancient Cinque Port, which, 
by the remains of ruins, and ancient streets, and 
public structures, discovers it to have been 
formerly a considerable and large city. There 
are to be seen vast caves and vaults, walls and 
towers, ruins of monasteries, and a sumptuous 

6f 



62 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

church, in which are some handsome monuments, 
especially of the Templars, buried just in the 
manner of those in the Temple of London. This 
place, being now all rubbish — a few despicable 
hovels and cottages only standing — hath got a 
Mayor. The sea, which formerly rendered it rich 
and commodious, hath now forsaken it." In 
Queen Elizabeth's time the town, although even 
then its glories were on the wane, was in so flourish- 
ing a condition that Her Majesty, struck with its 
commerce, its opulence, and population, bestowed 
upon it the complimentary title of " Little 
London." In 1288 old Winchelsea was swallowed 
up by the sea, and the present town was erected 
on a more secure site. 

The notable objects to be here examined are, 
however, many ; first, there is the old Strand 
Gate, a fourteenth century structure, which you 
pass under as you come from Rye — " a pic- 
turesque old pile, having a wide gateway between 
massive round towers. Looking through it from 
the inside, the town of Rye is seen seated on its 
hill, as though a picture, set in a heavy antique 
frame." 

The cottage, with the sloping mossy roof, that 
adjoins the gate on the left, was once the country 
house of Miss Ellen Terry. Landgate or Pipe 



WINCHELSEA 63 

Well, or Ferry Gate on the road to Udimore, is a 
mere shapeless mass of grey old stone, near which 
a few dull houses straggle. It bears a shield with 
the word " Helde " inscribed upon it, supposed to 
be the name of the mayor during whose supremacy 
it was erected. 

New Gate, on the Icklesham road, is a pic- 
turesque relic, and stands in a lovely nook which 
opens into a lane, whose banks, in the spring, are 
yellow with primroses. 

In the centre of the town stands the Church — 
or all that remains of it — dedicated to St. Thomas 
a Becket. The nave is said to have been destroyed 
by the French in 1380 ; the chancel and side aisles 
are still extant. The style is Early Decorated, 
and from its purity deserves particular examina- 
tion. Remark the exquisite fidelity of the 
sculptured foliage ; the curious corbel heads ; 
the rich foreign tracery of the side windows ; the 
piers of Bethersden marble and Caen stone ; the 
sedilia in the chancel (recently restored) ; the 
Perpendicular English windows ; and the light and 
airy three-bayed choir. 

To the south of the church is the entrance to 
" The Friars." This house was built over the 
ruins of a monastery in 181 9. " The Friars " was 
the residence, in 1780, of two daring robbers. 



64 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

George and Joseph Weston, one of whom was 
actually appointed churchwarden of Winchelsea, 
and both brothers living here, under assumed 
names, on the plunder acquired in their daring 
excursions, were held in much repute. After 
robbing the Bristol mail they were detected, 
apprehended, and one of them was hung. 

Thackeray's novel of " Denis Duval," is 
founded on their story, and they also figure in 
G. P. R. James's " Robber." 

The New Inn in Church Square, I will gladly 
name to all my readers who are satisfied with an 
old-fashioned Georgian inn, a good bed and plain 
but good fare. One article alone is of uncertain 
quality I am told. I was warned not to drink the 
water here, for a proverb says : " He who drinks 
at St. Leonard's well (near Winchelsea) must always 
slake his thirst at its waters." The hostess of the 
inn, who quoted the proverb to me, " a mighty 
civil gentlewoman," pressed her plump hands to 
her plump sides and laughed silently for a space 
when I replied : " Water ! I never drink water 
anywhere ! " The meal (which included a " Playz 
de Wynchelsee ") provided by the plump lady, 
made me think of that dinner at Mrs. Garrick's 
when Boswell whispered to his neighbour: "I 
believe this is as much as can be made of life." I 



WINCHELSEA 65 

did not leave this inn without adding to my store 
of quaint old Sussex ballads. An old song, which 
I found pasted inside a history of Sussex, runs 
something in this fashion, and it was called '* A 
Most Sweet Song of an English Merchant, born at 
Chichester.' ' The merchant, who was a fine, 
valiant fellow, killed a man at Emden in a quarrel, 
was apprehended and ordered to be hung. How- 
ever, the law of the seventeenth century allowed a 
criminal to be saved if a woman came forward to 
marry him. A beautiful Dutch maid, with timely 
sympathy, came forward : 

" ' I goe my love,' she said, 

' I run, I fly for thee ! 
And gentle Headsman spare a while, 

My lover's life for me ! ' 
Unto the Duke she went, 

Who did her grief remove, 
And with a hundred maidens more, 

She went to fetch her love. 

With musick sounding sweet, 

The foremost of the traine, 
This gallant maiden like a Bride, 

Did fetch him back againe ; 
Yes hand in hand they went 

Unto the Church that day, 

And they were married presently, 

In sumptuous rich array. 

E 



66 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

A sweetie thing is love, 

It rules both heart and mind ; 

There is no comfort in the world, 
To women that are kind." 

Winchelsea is a healthy spot in spite of being 
so near to the ague-bringing marshes. The 
shepherds call the ague " Old Johnny " and the 
" Bailiff o' the Marshes," and wear a charm against 
it — a three-cornered piece of paper, suspended 
round the neck, and inscribed : 

" Ague, I thee defy : 

Three days shiver, 
Three days shake, 
Make me well for Jesu's sake." 

The marsh on the outskirts is so criss-crossed 

with dykes that unless with some one of the 

marshes who knows the path it is best for the 

stranger not to try the foot-path way. As Tom 

Shoesmith says in Kipling's story of " Dymchurch 

Flit " : 

" The Marsh is just riddle with diks an' sluices, an' 
tide-gates, an' water-lets. You can hear 'em bubblin' an' 
grummelin' when the tide works in 'em, an' then you 
hear the sea rangin' left an' right-handed all up along 
the wall. You've seen how flat she is — the Marsh ? 
You'd think nothin' easier than to walk end-on across 
her ? Ah, but the diks an' the water-lets they twists the 
roads about as ravelly as witch-yarn on the spindles. 
So ye get all turned round in broad day-light." 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 



Chapter IV 

ROUND ABOUT RYE 

It was in the red -roofed town of Rye that 
Simon Cheyneys, the shipbuilder (" Simple 
Simon ") met Frankie Drake. At that time 
Drake was in the fetching trade between the 
persecuted Low Countries and England, and had 
put in at Rye from Chatham with his rudder 
splutted. 

" Take this boy aboard and drown him," said 
Simon's uncle, " and 111 mend your rudder piece 
for love." 

Simon relates how he served as a ship's boy 
with Drake, and was injured in a skirmish with 
a " gor-bellied Spanisher " and how he became a 
shipbuilder and burgess of Rye Port. We are also 
introduced to Simon's aunt, a notable woman, who 
was of Whitgift blood, and was the chosen one to 
see furthest through millstones. Drake beazled 
the life out of Simon's aunt, till she looked in his 
hand and told his fortune : 

" You'll do a many things, and eating and drinking 
with a dead man beyond the world's end will be the 

69 



70 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

least of them. For you'll open a road from the East unto 
the West, and back again, and you'll bury your heart 
with your best friend by that road-side, and the road you 
open none shall shut so long as you're let lie quiet in your 
grave." 

When this story was published in July, 1910, 
Kipling added the following foot-note : 

" The old lady's prophecy seems in a fair way of coming 
true, for when the Panama Canal is opened one end of it 
will close to the waters where Sir Francis Drake was 
buried, the road round Cape Horn will be abandoned and 
ships will cross the Isthmus of Panama on dry land." 

Rye more than any town in England preserves 
the atmosphere and flavour of some stranded town 
in Flanders or on the Zuyder Zee, and the stranger 
will find the ideal approach is across the marshes 
from the south, where one has the aspect of its 
singularly striking situation as its red roofs cluster 
steeply on all sides around the cathedral-like 
church which crowns the very summit of the 
pyramidal Rye rock. 

The prevailing note of Rye is a warm gaiety 
and cheerfulness, in spite of the grim old Ypres 
Tower, the grass - grown, break - neck, cobbled 
streets, and all its vanished glory. And the people 
are as bright and blithe as their town, and there 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 71 

are no squalid and mean houses. There are many 
tiny houses in Watchbell Street — at the end of 
which one gets a splendid view across the marsh 
to Winchelsea — and other small houses are 
clustered in Mermaid Street, but they are all 
bright and spotless, with bright windows and 
dazzling brass handles and bell-pulls. One feels 
as though all the houses in the old town were 
joining in a " Te Deum," and one must not for any- 
thing commit the sacrilege of taking part in any 
unseemly hurry or bustle lest the spell be broken, 
and a mysterious communion with the ghosts of 
the past rudely destroyed. 

Watchbell Street is one of the oldest in Rye ; 
it overhangs Watchbell Cliff, and took its name 
from the fact that a bell hung at the west end, 
which was rung in times of danger to summon 
the bold men of Rye to stand to the walls of their 
own dear town. The fighting spirit of the people 
still hangs about the name, and it is good to think 
how desperately the stout hearts of Rye fought 
for this cluster of time-softened and steep-roofed 
houses. All those scourges against which we 
pray — plague, pestilence and famine, battle, 
murder and sudden death — were endured by Rye. 
From its position, it was exposed to frequent 
attacks from the French. They burnt it in 1360, 



72 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

and again in 1377, when its flames shooting up 
against the dark, dense clouds alarmed the whole 
coast. After its evacuation, the unfortunate 
mayor and jurats were summarily tried for not 
having defended it more vigorously, and were 
incontinently hung and quartered. In 1448, it 
was once more visited by the French, who set fire 
to the church, and destroyed the nave and chancel. 
The plague scourged it severely on several 
occasions. 

The Land Gate, on the road to Dover, is 
a noble machicolated structure, with a fine 
archway which opens between two round towers, 
forty-seven feet high. The corresponding gate 
on the south-west side, was pulled down in 1815. 
Edward III fortified the town on the north and 
west sides with strong walls, and these were 
the only entrances. 

The Ypres Tower on the south-east side was 
built by William d' Ypres, Earl of Kent. This 
was the famous Earl who closed an illustrious 
career by shaving his head and donning the cowl, 
in his own Abbey of Laon in Flanders. Close at 
hand under the very shadow of " Wiper's Tower/' 
as it is called by the Sussex rustics, is the Gun 
Garden. From this point the reader can com- 
mand a view of the principal features of Romney 








o 



F 






a . 



ftis 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 73 

Marsh. From here one looks down the edge of 
the cliff to a line of black, tarred boat-buildings 
below, and on the slips there are sometimes to be 
seen the bare keels and ribs of fishing boats in the 
course of building. 

You may study the wide-spreading marshland 
and realise that strange kinship between per- 
sonality and place which Kipling expresses in 
" Dymchurch Flit." It is easy to understand 
why the marsh-folk are old-fashioned and reserved, 
for the utter desolation of the landscape with " its 
steeples settin' beside churches, an' wise women 
settin' beside their doors, and the sea settin' above 
the land, an' ducks her din' wild in the diks' " 
makes a gloomy picture. However, the marsh 
people love this landscape, which, it is true, 
possesses an interest and a character of its own. 
The clumps of elm, birch, or willow, here and there 
springing from a grassy knoll — the water-courses, 
rich in aquatic plants and frondent weeds — the 
wide stretches of broad green pasturage, sprinkled 
with grazing flocks — the far-off hamlet, and the 
grey old spire rising above its low, thatched roofs 
— and, from certain points, the wide sweep of the 
channel waters, bounded in the distance by a 
bank of clouds — all these features have inspired 
artists and poets. I cannot refrain from giving 



74 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

here a wider publicity to that beautiful song of 
" Romney Marsh," written by Mr. E. G. Bucke- 
ridge : 

" As I came out by Biddenden 

There murmured in my ears, 
The song that all wayfaring men 

Have heard in all the years. 
And all the way, by hill and moor, 

That song went down with me, 
By Tenterden and Appledore 

And Romney to the sea. 

And so I came through Romney marsh 

That holds no house or tree, 
Only the wide, sheep-dotted grass 

That once was sand and sea. 
Only the frail windmills that lift 

Against the sunset fire, 
And faintly pencilled on the drift 

The ghost of Romney spire. 

And thus all day across the fen 

With me went singing down, 
The road I found by Biddenden 

And lost by Romney town ; 
For all men come to sleep at last, 

As all roads to the sea, 
And winding in the dusk it passed, 

But left its song with me. 

The clumps of elm, which here and there relieve 
the dreary expanse of marsh grass, will serve to 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 75 

call the reader's mind to Kipling's " Tree Song," 
which has been set to music by an East Sussex 
lady, Miss Florence Aylward (Mrs. H. Kinder) and 
published by Chappell & Co. : 

" Ellum she hateth mankind, and waiteth 

Till every gust be laid, 
To drop a limb on the head of him, 

That anyway trusts her shade, 
But whether a lad be sober or sad, 

Or mellow with ale from the horn, 
He will take no wrong when he lieth along 

'Neath Oak, and Ash, and Thorn ! " 

Queen Elizabeth must have had a great liking 
for the " ancient towne," and made many pro- 
gresses to Rye. It will be recalled that the second 
story in " Rewards and Fairies," tells how Gloriana 
spent three days — " knighting of fat Mayors," 
and christened the town Rye Royal. The year 
after the Armada she presented it with " six brass 
guns beautifully ornamented with the arms of 
Spain, which stood on the spot called the Green." 
Tradition claims that the old and curious clock 
which adorns the northern side of the church tower 
was also the gift of Elizabeth. The clock is re- 
markable by reason of two gilt " quarter-boys," 
who strike the quarters with a thin, clear note 
upon two bells, and between them is a kind of 



76 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

shield bearing the solemn words : " For our time 
is a very shadow that passeth away." The 
pendulum (eighteen feet in length) hanging 
through the roof swings over the heads of the 
people, and has been a source of joy to genera- 
tions of school children. The Rev. A. P. Howes 
in his " Guide to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, 
Rye," mentions that the clock was purchased by 
the Churchwardens in 1560, and adds that parti- 
culars of its erection in the gable of the north 
transept are given in the church records, dating 
from 1513 to 1570. 

A carved mahogany table used as an altar in the 
Chapel of St. Clare is an interesting specimen of 
early Chippendale furniture, dating from about 
1726. A tradition more pleasing than authentic 
says that it is from the spoils of the Armada, and 
was given by Elizabeth. However, I was in- 
formed that it was given by a Mr. Lamb about 
200 years ago. The Lamb family was connected 
with Rye for many years, and the list of mayors 
painted on the panels of the interior of the Town 
Hall shows that several of them occupied the 
mayoral chair, covering a period of about 120 
years from 1723. 

At the top of Mermaid Street, round the corner 
into West Street, is Lamb House, where Henry 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 77 

James, the novelist, lived from 1898 to 1916. 
It is a house of great dignity and retirement, and 
turns its back with all its secrets to the passer-by 
and faces a high walled garden. We know it is a 
house of crowded shadows and memories, for local 
history whispers that here once lived a " flame " of 
the " First Gentleman of Europe." It is just such 
a time-softened house that one would have ex- 
pected Henry James, the artist in subtleties, to 
have picked out for his home. Henry James came 
very little before the public notice, but he was a 
great man and a great artist. He had a horror of 
publicity, and perhaps avoided the outside world 
a little too much. His books, as it may be 
guessed, are anything but popular in this age 
which despises quietude and beauty. Just before 
his death, he quoted Shelley with pathetic 
humour : " ' Look on my works, ye mighty, and 
despair ! ' " and, " I am . . . after my long 
career, utterly, insurmountably, unsaleable." 

The heart of Rye is the quaintly attractive 
Mermaid Street, so steep and narrow, with the 
grass growings between its irregular cobble stones. 
It takes its name from the Mermaid Inn : 

" An old-world, quaint, begabled hostelry — 

Nay haunted if you will. These oaken beams 

Saw the midsummer night of Shakespeare's dreams. 



78 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

The morn when menacing Spain found Drake at play. 

Without a fierce wind holds the rain at bay, 
But here the firelight's ruddy welcome streams 
O'er toilworn forms, and on the pewter gleams 

Where foams the bright brown ale of Arcady. 

The cares of the brief winter day are o'er. 

Now Hesperus brings his boons ; the pipes are lit, 
Fast flows the interchange of homely wit, 

The talk of ten-mile-travels and wildwood lore." 

As far back as one can follow the ancient 
records of the town, there has always been a 
Mermaid Inn there, and when it is remembered 
that Rye was the birthplace, in 1579 of Fletcher, 
the Elizabethan dramatist, it seems to bring the 
whole place into quite close connection with 
Shakespeare and the famous Mermaid Tavern in 
Bread Street. The Mermaid Inn at Rye has been 
refronted, and is built round a small courtyard. 
It has several good fireplaces and oak-panelled 
rooms. Lower down the street is Old Hospital, 
as it is called, which once belonged to the well- 
known Rye family of Jeake. It is an almost 
perfect specimen of a timbered house, with three 
pointed overhanging gables, steep, tiled roof, and 
charming leaded windows, whose diamond panes 
bulge in and out with age and catch the light at 
all angles. At the bottom of the steep pitch we 
turn to the right into the Mint, which winds 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 79 

round into High Street, on the north side of which 
we face the charming red brick frontage of 
Pocock's School, where Thackeray's Denis Duval 
went to school. 

In past years shipbuilding flourished at Rye, 
Sussex oak, the best in the kingdom, being close 
at hand. But this industry has to a large extent 
declined, though smacks are still built at the Rock 
Channel Shipyard — a yard which has a reputation 
among fishermen. In " Simple Simon " (" Re- 
wards and Fairies ") we read of a forty-foot oak 
going down to Rye to make a keel for a Lowestoft 
fishing boat, and the last time I was in the town 
I heard the shipbuilders of this indomitable port 
cheerfully hammering away at their work in a 
manner that plainly said, " If the sea will not 
come to Rye, we will go down to the sea/' An 
indomitable temper and a readiness to believe that 
to-morrow will be brighter than to-day is the pre- 
vailing spirit of her people, and as Mr. Hueffer has 
remarked, the town " has an incredible hold upon 
life and its beloved rock." It was this spirit that 
cheerfully rebuilt Rye from its frequent ashes and 
raised up the great church that now crowns the 
rock, and deserves, not less than in Jeake's time, 
his praise as being " the goodliest edifice of the 
kind in Kent and Sussex, the cathedrals ex- 



80 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

cepted." The town gave birth to the remarkable 
family of the Jeakes. The first, born in 1623, was 
the historian of the Cinque Ports, and builder of 
the family house in Mermaid Street. He was an 
astrologer and an alchemist, who left a store of 
books in fifteen languages, but no copy of " Shakes- 
peare." He left a " Treatise on the Elixir of 
Life," and a note in his diary states that he laid 
the foundation-stone of his house " under a 
position of heaven." The astrologically curious 
should observe the curious figured stone (if it has 
not been removed) in the front wall. The second 
Jeake drew horoscopes, wrote on astrology and 
the other secret and hidden things, and at the age 
of twenty-nine married Elizabeth Hartshorne, 
aged thirteen and a half. The third Jeake — they 
were all called Samuel — goes down in the book of 
fame for constructing a flying machine, which 
would do anything else but soar up to the skies, 
and which in the end nearly killed him. They 
were a queer cranky family, and one may trace 
the same whimsical disposition in many of 
Kipling's Sussex characters, especially in " Widow 
Whitgift," who was concerned in the flight of the 
fairies in " Dymchurch Flit," and Tom Shoesmith 
in the same story. 

But as Kipling remarks, Rye is but the edge of 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 81 

The Marsh — " the won'erful odd-gates place — 
Romney Marsh " — where the people are all more 
or less full of whims and superstitions. So 
secluded is it from the rest of England, that one 
can well understand how Tom Shoesmith speaks 
of the world as being divided into Europe, Asia, 
Africa, America and Romney Marsh. It is now, 
as in Leland's time, " a marvelous rank ground for 
fedyng of catel," but not so well adapted to the 
comfort of its human inhabitants, because its air 
— to adopt Lambarde's quaint phraseology — is 
■ bad in winter, worse in summer, and at no time 
good." This section of the country appears in 
the delightful story " Dymchurch Flit," and we 
are told that the Marshmen say that from Time 
Everlasting Beyond, the Pharisees have favoured 
the Marsh beyond the rest of Old England. 

An old quatrain much quoted about this tract of 
country states that it is conspicuous for wealth 
without health, and supports Lambarde's remark 
that " here anyone shall find good grass under- 
foot rather than wholesome air above the head " : 

" Rye, Romney and Hythe for wealth without health, 
The Downs for health and poverty, 
But you shall find both health and wealth 
From Foreland Head to Knole and Lee." 

A sidelight is cast upon the marshman's belief 

F 



82 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

in the supernatural in Kipling's " Brookland 

Road." Brookland lies about nine miles to the 

north of Lydd in a country of many waters, and 

it was in the shadow of the picturesque old village 

trees in the " middest of a hot June night " that 

the rustic caught sight of the face of his ghostly 

love : 

" She only smiled and she never spoke, 
She smiled and went away ; 
But when she'd gone my heart was broke, 
And my wits was clean astray." 

The church, dedicated to St. Augustine, is a 

goodly building, with a three-storied bell tower of 

massive timber standing detached on the north 

side. There is a confessional in the chancel, and 

a piscina within the altar rails. The Norman font, 

made of cast lead, is enriched with two rows of 

very small emblematical figures, twenty in each 

row. Turning to the right on leaving the church, 

we gain, in about fifteen minutes' walk, the 

Blue Wall, stretching from Romney to Appledore, 

and following the ancient course of the Rother. 

For a few yards we keep towards Appledore, and 

then again turn off to the right. We soon find 

ourselves at Brenzett, which is mentioned in " A 

Three-Part Song " : 

" Oh Romney level and Brenzett reeds, 
I reckon you know what my mind needs ! " 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 83 

On the evening of my tour about Rye, I re- 
turned feeling very weary to a certain hostelry 
and demanded entertainment, and after a meal 
I went into the bar to drink beer with some 
labourers, a tramp, and a local gentleman. The 
latter was of no great age, but of a venerable 
appearance. He was perhaps fifty years old, but 
he had let his hair grow longish and wore a soft 
felt hat crushed on his head in a careless manner. 
His features had the preoccupied look of the 
dreamer and idealist, and his whole appearance 
marked him as one of those who are care- 
less about external show and consider life too 
valuable to be frittered away by money-making 
more than is absolutely essential for nature's most 
primitive needs. Presently I moved my measure 
of ale to his table, and began to talk to him of 
how good the gods had been to the people of Rye 
in granting them such a beautiful old town with 
its treasures of oak, and overhanging gables, and 
bulged leaded windows — all immemorial things. 
Much to my interest the local man informed me he 
had lived in the town for fifty-two years, and his 
family had lived there for three hundred. Sitting 
in the long smoke-scented twilight the stranger 
unfolded himself like a lotus to the Egyptian 
moon. He was a worthy man — the child of 



84 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

well-to-do Sussex yeoman ancestry — a man both 
brilliant and the possessor of a great store of the 
philosophy and knowledge of village folk. Above 
all, he was an epicure in inns. Not the dingy 
public-houses or the modern " hydros " dealing 
in crem-de-menths and stuffs which appeal to the 
extravagant, but Inns, mark you ! Inns with 
long and low windows and pleasing red blinds. 
Inns with round oak tables agreeably ringed with 
memories of a thousand pewter measures of ale. 
Inns in which mine host is still Mr. Merrythought 
and where the guest is always made welcome. 
Inns where the ale has character and distinction, 
and is served with all the prescribed rites ; where 
one may call for, and receive, strong audit ale 
in a tall tapering glass, Burton in the mazy mug 
of willow pattern, or Small Beer in the pewter. I 
discovered later that my friend was the son of a 
Gascon father and a Sussex mother, which 
accounted for his scholarly speech, love of songs, 
and many oddities of temperament. 
He had established himself as the Dictator of the 

Inn, and all people bowed to his will. He ruled 

there autocratically, having instituted various 
rites and rules, disobedience to which was visited 
with his most scorching rebukes. He had a pre- 
scriptive right to the tall dark oak chair with the 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 85 

red plush back, and the peg beside the coloured 
hunting scene was sacred to his venerable head- 
dress. He seemed to pass his life tramping 
through the highways and by-ways of England, 
bringing to bear an aristocratic, artistic scorn on 
all the modern conveniences of life, which have 
multiplied so fast of late. To this day, therefore, 
he writes with a quill pen and is the possessor of a 
pot-bellied gold watch which winds up with a 
large key. He drinks no soda-water but from a 
round-bottomed tumbling bottle with a wired 
cork, and the reader will learn without surprise 
that motor cars are anathema to him. 

I could see that the stranger was willing enough 
for companionship, and chance companionship 
having a fascination for me, I said to him : " Let 
us smoke and call for ale." 

We lit our pipes and called each for our own 
drink, I for my audit ale, and the stranger (whom 
I shall call Balger) for a brandy. These placed 
before us we moved over to the tramp and 
labourers at the great table and saluted them. 
We asked them to fill their mugs at our expense. 
The tramp slowly filled a well-gnawed pipe, placed 
it beside him on the table, lifted his mug, and 
paused before taking a draught, to wish us health. 

Myself : " That is the best wish in the world, 



86 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

and only one letter differentiates the word ' health ' 
from ' wealth.' The things themselves are even 
more closely related. Every time you get out 
into the sun and wind and laugh and drink old 
ale, you are absorbing potential wealth into your 
being." 

Balger : " What you say is true. Moreover, 
one of the true sons of Rye, John Fletcher, gave 
us this thought in majestic rhyme : 

" Drink to-day and drown all sorrow, 
You shall perhaps not do it to-morrow : 
Best, while you have it, use your breath : 
There is no drinking after death. 

Then let us swill, boys, for our health, 
Who drinks well, loves the commonwealth. 
And he that will to bed go sober 
Falls with the leaf still in October." 

The Tramp : " Why, I can sing a song in that 
style." 

(In a very full and decisive manner he gave us 
that indefensible glee roared out for generations 
by Sussex rustics) : 

" He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober, 
Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October : 
But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow, 
Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow." 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 87 

Balger : " Now that is a good song. With 
such a companionable thought who can say that 
the jovial past is dead ? The merry ghost of the 
past still smiles at us broadly, and we are here 
to-night to keep the ghost smiling. We will 
drink to the memory of that jolly old playwright 
named Cratinus, who died of a broken heart on 
seeing some soldiers spear a cask of wine and let 
it run to waste. And to Chaucer who received 
from England's King a great measure of wine daily 
in London town. And to Doctor Johnson who 
declared roundly and without shocking anybody, 
' Brandy, sir, is the drink for heroes.' On this 
theme a writer by the name of Peacock com- 
posed some verses, and as I think you may not 
have previously heard them, I shall make the 
experiment of singing them to a tune of my own ." 

And with that Balger went over to the piano and 
sang to us this drinking song which is the kindest 
and most scandalous that poet ever penned : 

' If I drink water while this doth last, 

May I never again drink wine ; 
For how can a man, in his life of a span 

Do anything better than dine ? 
We'll dine and drink, and say if we think 

That anything better can be ; 
And when we have dined, wish all mankind 

May dine as well as we. 



SS KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

And though a good wish will fill no dish, 

And brim no cup with sack, 
Yet thoughts will spring as the glasses ring 

To illumine our studious track. 
O'er the brilliant dreams of our hopeful schemes 

The light of the flask shall shine ; 
And we'll sit till day, but we'll find the way 

To drench the world with wine." 



Balger sang those verses three times over, and 
the labourers, seeing how good things were 
tobacco and ale, helped him with the chorus, and 
then swelled in diverse tones the lines : 

" And when we have dined, wish all mankind 
May dine as well as we." 

Myself (to the company) : " Now is not that 
an honest kind of song, and does it not recall o her 
mellow lines by a South Downs man — Hilaire 
Belloc ? " 

The Tramp : " That name is new to me, 
although I have tramped the Downs for many 
years. 

Balger : " Then I will sing you a tavern-bred, 
tavern-carol by this poet. But when I sing 
her you must pounce on the chorus and make the 
hussy go with a great round roar of song. Let it 
be a gale of song blowing around the world." 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 89 

Having thus adjured the company, Balger in 
a low mellow voice began to sing that carol which 
Grizzlebeard (in Belloc's " The Four Men ") put 
down as a definite, unrepentant expression of 
heterodoxy : 

"Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel! 
A Catholic tale have I to tell ; 
And a Christian song have I to sing 
While all the bells in Arundel ring. 

I pray good beef and I pray good beer 
This holy night of all the year, 
But I pray detestable drink for them 
That give no honour to Bethlehem." 

When Balger came to the third verse, he said 
that he would sing it very slowly, as he wished us 
to catch up the words as he went along. He sang 
that verse twice, with simple craft, and the words 
beat like blows upon the company : 

" May all good fellows that here agree 
Drink audit ale in heaven with me, 
And may all my enemies go to hell ! 
Noel! Noel! Noel! Noel! 
May all my enemies go to hell ! 
Noel! Noel! 

The mood was on us, and to the lilt of some old- 
world music, we bellowed out that third verse 



go KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

with such gusto that several curious people came 
in and joined us. 

At the first the people who drifted in to hear 
the sing-song were all desperately correct. But 
by degrees the jovial music and the good aroma 
which rose from the Old October ale set a tune in 
their hearts. Loud laughter and free jests re- 
placed formal conversation between the songs ; 
the consumption of ale was Rabelaisian. But 
Balger was the great, the omnipotent personage of 
the feast. Indeed, he had the incommunicable 
gift of setting his soul a-dancing as he played and 
sang his songs, of putting a hundred little devils 
into the feet of the listeners which made them 
long to dance to his mad tunes. But with all his 
buffoonery, and runagate ways, he never quite 
lost a certain aristocracy of demeanour. 

The Tramp : " Seeing how you're a man of 
rare musical gifts, I should like you, sir, to mek a 
rhyme of mine run to a tune — a right good rollicky 
tune." 

Balger : "I will make you a tune which will 
pretty well knock a lark out o' the sky." 

The Tramp : " Then I will speak to you the 

rhyme." 

" Hipper dy, nipper dy, nick-nock, 
The Poor Man's back of the clock-clock ; 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 91 

Give him a bray, 
Drive him away, 
While we all of us sing tick tock." 

Balger : " Oh ! Lord ! That is mere tom- 
foolery ! The man chaunts no-sense stuff as we 
say in Sussex." 

The Tramp (angrily) : " It is nothing of the 
sort. It is a great charm against the Poor Man 
which my mother told me, and it is a charm which 
every child should know and every grown man 
remember. You must know that the devil, or, 
as we Sussex people more sympathisingly call 
him, the Poor Man, wroth at the number of 
churches which sprang up yearly in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Downs, near Brighton, resolved 
to dig a trench from this point down to the sea, 
and so to inundate the whole countryside. But 
as he was toiling by night with assiduous energy, 
he was descried by an old woman from the 
cottage window, who held up a candle in a sieve 
that she might the better comprehend his design, 
and frightening the devil into the belief that it 
was the sunrise, he immediately disappeared. 
When he found out his error his black heart was 
full of raving passion and he flew away over the 
hills to Mayfield to tell St. Dunstan how he had 
been tricked (for he had it in his black heart that 



92 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

St. Dunstan would punish the old woman for the 
deception) and found the old boy singing of Mass. 
And when St. Dunstan had heard the Poor Man 
whine out his story of how he had been tricked, 
he asked him to step into his little workshop in 
the palace, and drink a friendly mug of Mayfields 
buttery ale over the matter. 

" Then the Poor Man took a seat while St. Dunstan 
blew the bellows and made his forge fire roar up, 
for St. Dunstan, hap you have heard, was odd- 
fashioned no bounds, and a wonderful hand at 
smithying and fashioning altar vessels. 

" And all the time the devil was first raging and 
roaring away with passion, and then shrill and 
sorrowful about having been cheated by the old 
woman, while St. Dunstan, who felt trouble same 
as eels feel thunder, was warming up a parti- 
cularly long and sharp pair of pincers in his forge, 
' Now what do you think of it all ? ' said the Poor 
Man. ' I think you have been very scurvily 
treated/ said St. Dunstan coaxingly, and with that 
he pulled his tongs all red-hot from the charcoal 
fire and fixed them tight on the devil's nose, who, 
with a single spring, leapt to Tunbridge Wells, 
where he cooled the injured organ in a brook, 
imparting to the waters thereabouts the harsh 
flavour ever since retained." 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 93 

Myself : " Yes, but look here. That legend 
really belongs to Glastonbury — if you don't mind 
me pointing it out." 

The tramp did seem to mind very much indeed, 
for he puffed out prodigious clouds of smoke from 
his pipe, and swelled with rage. 

The Tramp : " Hutt ! I've heard that talk too. 
If you listen to them foreigners out that way, 
you'll listen to a pack o' lies. And ain't the very 
tongs he twitched the ole man's nose with still to 
be seen by all folk at Mayfield and the old hammer 
too, both manufactured of good Sussex iron at the 
Mayfield furnaces. Bah ! You've been misled 
by the heretics." 

Myself : " I beg your pardon. I'm sorry." 

The Tramp : " Enough ! You are forgiven. 
But maybe you will think of this rhyme in 
eternity, and no doubt you will come up against 
the poor man who is always on the look out to 
entrap good Christian people. So although this 
jingle appears to have little or no meaning to you, 
it has a deep and intimate significance to others. 
The poor man back of the clock is the ole devil, 
whose approach must be driven away with this 
song. Nothing like a good song to keep him at 
arm's length." 

B alger : " Yes ! Yes ! All songs are good ! 



94 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

We must not let old customs decay, for such things 
are vital to man. We will sing the tramp's song 
and drink to the ghost of the noble past." 

When the tramp's jingle had been trolled out 
by the whole panjandrum — Lord, how we all gave 
that throat ! — the time had come when the good 
people must be going, and when the last had paid 
his reckoning and gone his way under the star- 
litten sky, I drew my chair up to the fire (for I was 
to sleep in the house that night) called for a mug 
of Smith's noted Lamberhurst ale and filled one 
more pipe to smoke with the landlord. And then 
to bed. 

About two miles from Appledore Station we 
come to the church and village of Fairfield, another 
of the small and lonely settlements which dot the 
borders of the marsh. The truth of Kipling's 
lines : 

" Oh ! Fairfield Church is water-bound 
From Autumn to the Spring." 

may be appreciated from a circumstance recorded 
about eighty years ago by Hasted : " For the 
greatest part of the year, the marshmen could 
only approach their church by boat, or on horse- 
back, and, in the latter case, they waded through 
the waters up to their saddle girths." 



ROUND ABOUT RYE 95 

In these verses Kipling treats of emotions which 
are the common property of man. We have all 
had the same feelings as the rustic on Brooklands 
Road some time or other — the midnight walk 
through some desolate country, the impalpable 
night, ominous, mysterious all around, foliage so 
dense that the stars are hidden, strange shadows 
dancing and trees that twist their branches into 
fantastic shapes, the long-drawn-out and mournful 
howl of a dog which spells the word death some- 
where at the back of the brain, and then — O 
Terror of Terrors ! — the patter of footsteps behind ; 
footsteps that stop when you pause, and com- 
mence again when you step breathlessly forward. 

The marshes about Fairfield are the haunts of 
wild fowl, snipe especially breeding in abundance, 
while the ditches are well stocked with eels and 
perch, with here and there a ferocious pike to 
wage war upon the smaller fry in the stream. 
The weathercock of Fairfield Church, that turns 
and creaks overhead, is riddled with bullets, and 
the reason of this I am told is that there is a 
tradition among sportsmen that when they pass 
the little church it is the correct thing to salute 
the old vane with powder and shot. This church 
is very old — some say over a thousand years. 
Services are not held here in the winter time. It 



96 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

is interesting to learn that only one wedding and 
one burial have taken place in this church during 
the last sixty years. 

Over the west gable is a wooden turret contain- 
ing three bells said to have been founded by 
Danyell, about 1450. 



OUT-LYING VILLAGES AT BEXHILL 



-■> 



G 



Chapter V 

OUT-LYING VILLAGES AT BEXHILL 

There are several old houses at Hooe, about 
four miles north-west of Bexhill, which are worth 
examination. There is a fine old fireplace at 
Eaton's Farm which bears the date 1672, and 
Court Lodge, which was built in 1637, is a 
handsome old house, and once the residence of 
the Fullers, a family mentioned in Kipling's 
" Gloriana." Many generations of this family of 
forge-masters are buried in Hooe churchyard. 
On account of the awful earthquake at Lisbon, 
which even affected the sea round the Sussex 
coast, a general fast was appointed for Friday, 
February 6th, 1756, and Nathanael Torriano, 
M.D., Minister of Hooe and Ninfield, preached two 
sermons which were printed, secured much notice, 
and obtained a large circulation. Copies of them 
are in the British Museum. His congregation on 
the Thursday evening must have been more sleepy 
than usual, for he said : " Do not prostitute this 
house of prayer by changing it into a dormitory." 
The vestry of Hooe Church is said to have been 

99 



ioo KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

built about noo. In the east end is a large 
arched recess, in which there existed a very old 
fireplace. It is supposed an altar stood in it. 
It has been suggested that the base of the chimney 
stack once supported a calvary (or stone cross), 
or formed the steps to an entrance. Another idea 
is there was a room to the east of the vestry, and 
a door where the chimney stands. Part of the 
brickwork is Norman (as in Battle Abbey). It is 
possible that it was the Prior's residence till about 
1370, when it became a lady chapel, and in 1559-60 
it was transformed into a vestry, with a fireplace 
where the altar had stood. The masonry in the 
gable ends is of a later period — probably Per- 
pendicular. The interior walls of the vestry are 
very uneven, but colourwash, whitewash and 
plaster prevent an examination of their com- 
position. 

The Lamb Inn on Sewers Bridge on the road to 
Pevensey, the Wheat sheaf Inn at Little Common 
on the road to Bexhill, and the Red Lion at Hooe 
are all ancient and notable old inns with noble 
open fireplaces and plenty of Sussex oak beams in 
their ceilings. The most critical wayfarer, if he 
can find half an excuse should turn in and quaff 
a pint of ale with the marshmen at the Lamb. 
Here, if it be a winter's evening, ash-wood logs 



VILLAGES AROUND BEXHILL 101 

burn and lend incense to the old rooms. Only 
green ash wood is used for fuel in Sussex. Sare — 
that is the local word for withered wood — is 
never used : 

ft Burn ash-wood green, 
Fit fuel for a Queen : 
Burn ash-wood sare 
'Twool make a man swear." 

What a wonderful thing is the tickle of ash- 
wood smoke ! It is a little flitting ghost of an 
odour subtle with suggestions of the English 
country-side and home. Surely it is one of the 
most poignant of our emotions, this nostalgia 
born of a whiff of wood smoke. Kipling knows 
the odour of burning logs as the parent of visions 
and reveries, for I find him telling the Royal 
Geographical Society (February 18, 1914)* an< 
about this primal and elemental appeal to our 
emotions : 

" I suggest, subject to correction — there are only two 
elementary smells of universal appeal — the smell of 
burning fuel and the smell of melting grease. The smell, 
that is, of what man cooks his food over, and what he 
cooks his food in. Fuel ranges from coal to cowdung — 
specially cowdung — and cocoanut-husk ; grease from 
butter through ghi to palm and cocoanut oil ; and these 
two, either singly or in combination, make the back- 
ground and furnish the active poison of nearly all the 



102 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

smells which assault and perturb the mind of the way- 
faring man returned to civilisation. I rank wood-smoke 
first since it calls up more, more intimate and varied 
memories over a wider geographical range, to a larger 
number of individuals than any other agent that we 
know. My powers are limited, but I think I would 
undertake to transport a quarter of a million Englishmen 
to any point in South Africa, from Zambezi to Cape 
Agulhas, with no more elaborate vehicle than a box of 
matches, a string or two of rifle cordite, a broken-up 
biscuit box, some chips of a creosoted railway sleeper, 
and a handful of dried cowdung, and to land each man in 
the precise spot he had in his mind. And that is only a 
small part of the world that wood-smoke controls. A 
whiff of it can take us back to forgotten marches over 
unnamed mountains with disreputable companions ; to 
day-long halts beside flooded rivers in the rain ; wonder- 
ful mornings of youth in brilliantly lighted lands where 
everything was possible — and generally done ; to uneasy 
wakings under the low desert moon and on top of cruel, 
hard pebbles ; and, above all, to that God's own hour, 
all the world over, when the stars have gone out and it is 
too dark to see clear, and one lies with the fumes of last 
night's embers in one's nostrils — lies and waits for a new 
horizon to heave itself up against a new dawn. Wood- 
smoke magic works on every one according to his experi- 
ence. I live in a wood-smoke country and I know how 
men, otherwise silent, become suddenly and surprisingly 
eloquent under its influence." 

About two and a half miles west of Bexhill is 
Cooden Beach. Bungalows fringe the sea front, 
but the beach is very secluded. The following 



VILLAGES AROUND BEXHILL 103 

verses, written by Geoffrey Howard, express the 
repose, sweetness of the sea air, and beauty of the 
chance-made gardens of the surrounding country : 

" I know a beach road, 

A road where I would go, 
It runs up northward 

From Cooden Bay to Hooe ; 
And there, in the High Woods, 
Daffodils grow. 

And whoever walks along there 

Stops short and sees, 
By the moist tree-roots 

In a clearing of the trees, 
Yellow great battalions of them 

Blowing in the breeze. 

And there shall rise to me 

From that consecrated ground 
The old dreams, the lost dreams 

That years and cares have drowned : 
Welling up within me 

And above me and around 
The song that I could never sing 

And the face I never found." 

For a beautiful walk from Hooe, which would 
embrace the highly interesting Hurstmonceux 
Castle, I should be disposed to recommend a 
three-mile walk to Wartling Hill, where there is a 
church dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen. The 
south aisle is separately dedicated to St. Catherine. 



104 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

A fair and quiet resting place encircles this grey 
old church, and your thoughts here should go back 
to the Faerie Queene : 
a' This is the port of rest from troublous toyle, 

The worlde's sweet Inn from paine and wearisome 
turmoyle." 

On the south exterior you may see a Pelham 
buckle, and a Catherine wheel carved on the 
buttress. 

The last mile of the lane, which leads from Hooe 
to Wartling, is thick with hazel-nut bushes, and 
should you walk that way in September you must 
remember the Sussex proverb, " If you go a- 
nutting on Sunday, Satan will come and hold the 
boughs down for you ! " 

The Convent House is a notable old red-tiled 
building, and the most critical wayfarer will be 
arrested by the sign of " Teas served here," hang- 
ing on the gate, also the Lamb Inn is well qualified 
to entertain the wanderer. 

About one mile past Wartling is a gate on the 
left which gives access to the Hurstmonceux 
domain ; this being entered, the upper part of the 
ruin will soon come into view ; the castle lies 
quite in a hollow. 

The gardens are open on payment of a small fee 
on Wednesdays. 



VILLAGES AROUND BEXHILL 105 

Founded in the time of Henry VI., on the site 
probably of an earlier residence, by Sir Roger de 
Fienes, an Agincourt warrior, the Castle is now 
one of the most picturesque ruins in England, and 
is the more worthy of attention from its being one 
of the largest brick structures of the middle ages 
now remaining. Though decayed, it continued 
in something like its original state till near the close 
of the eighteenth century, but in 1777, after an 
examination by Wyatt, the architect, it was 
decided to dismantle it, so far as the roof and 
timber work were concerned. The Castle con- 
tained as many windows as there were days in 
the year, and as many chimneys as there were 
Sundays. 

The moat formerly spread out into a large 
pond, but in the reign of Elizabeth it was drained 
and formed into a pleasaunce. The gateway is in 
the south tower, and here the pseudo-military 
character of the structure is strongly marked with 
its port grooves and cross-bow loop holes. In the 
" Handbook for Eastbourne " (1878), George 
Chambers gives a description as the castle 
appeared at that date : — 

" From the turrets the sea is visible, but the staircases 
are now too dilapidated for them to be accessible, 
though the first 42 steps of the staircase in the Eastern 



106 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

turret are in fair condition. Over the gateway is the 
badge of the Fieneses, an alant or wolf-dog, holding 
in his paws a banner charged with 3 lions rampant. 
The turrets are pierced for 3 tiers of cross-bows 
loop-holes to command the draw-bridge. Below the 
lowest tier are holes for the discharge of match-lock guns, 
which in early times required to be fired almost on a 
level and from supports. 

" The Castle is very nearly square, the N. and S. 
fronts being 214 feet and the E. and W. 206 feet long, 
measured from centre to centre of the several towers at 
the four corners. These corner towers which are 
octagonal and embattled, rise about fifteen feet above the 
adjacent battlements. Somewhat similar towers occupy 
the centre of each of the W., N. and E. fronts, but 
that on the N. is much dilapidated. Midway between 
the corner towers and the central towers the uniformity 
of each front is broken by semi-octagonal embattled pro- 
jections of the same height as the main building. The 
southernmost of the projections on the E. front exhibits 
an oriel window of good proportions, which admitted 
light to the room known as the ' Lady's Bower.' 

" The gateway opens into the Porter's Lodge, portions 
of the vaulted ceiling of which are still to be seen. The 
room over is called the * Drummer's (or Haunted) 
Tower.' The un-earthly drum of Hurstmonceux is said 
to have been the invention of a gardener, who sounded it 
in the interest of certain smugglers by whome the Castle 
was frequented. 

" The Guard-room is situated to the W. of the gate- 
way. Traces remain in the S. wall of the furnaces 
fitted up for the casting of bullets. 

" Under the tower at the S.E. angle is a room, once 



VILLAGES AROUND BEXHILL 107 

a dungeon ; a stone pillar with a chain attached — a 
melancholy indication — existed in Grose's time. 

M It would seem that the founder of Hurstmonceux 
wished posterity to know of him as a man addicted to 
hospitality, for the oven in the bakehouse is 14 feet 
in diameter. The bakehouse was near the S.W. 
angle, and the oven is still to be seen ; according to 
tradition 24 women once sat down to tea in it. 
The kitchen, which nearly adjoined the bakehouse on 
the N., was of somewhat corresponding dimensions, for 
instance, it was 28 feet high and contained three large 
fireplaces. Two of these built in the W. wall, may be 
readily found, though they are now bricked up." 

Addison's comedy " The Drummer," is founded 
on the Hurstmonceux tradition of a devilish 
musician who sent forth a mysterious tattoo. 

Bulverhythe, mentioned in " Dymchurch Flit," 
is distant about a mile and a half from St. 
Leonards. On the right of the road are the ruins 
of an ancient church or chapel. Bulverhythe is 
said to take its name from the peculiar nature of 
the gift made by William the Conqueror to one 
of his followers — the grant being as much ground 
as could be compassed or covered by a bull's hide. 
In the ordinary manner this would have been 
but a poor territory had not the recipient resorted 
to the expedient of cutting the hide into as thin 
strips as possible, and thus enclosing a somewhat 
extended area. This is a very old story, and not 



108 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

peculiar to Bulverhythe. The more learned 
derivation of the name is from Bolver or Bulver, 
one of the war titles of Odin. The word was 
written formerly Bolewarheth, and has become 
altered to the present spelling. The sea has made 
terrible advances at this point, the encroachment 
being attributed to the fall of the cliffs at Beachy 
Head, as well as those which formerly projected 
into the sea at Bulverhythe and Galley Hill Points. 
Various relics of the stone work and tiles of the 
chapel built in the thirteenth century by the 
Earls of Eu were found when an excavation was 
made in 1862, and the ground plan was distinctly 
traced, In former days, there was a considerable 
haven for ships at Bulverhythe, and in 1676, a 
town meeting decreed that all " shallops and 
other outlandish vessels which put into Bulver- 
hythe haven," if they came on shore within the 
borough should pay i2d. to the pier- wardens. 



PEVENSEY 



Chapter VI 

PEVENSEY 

Pevensey and its Castle is the scene of four 
stories by Kipling : " Young Men at the Manor," 
" The Knight of the Joyous Venture," " Old Men 
at Pevensey," " The Treasure and the Law." 

The first story introduces us to Sir Richard 
Dalyngridge, who tells of his part in the Battle 
of Hastings, where his life was saved by Hugh 
of Dallington, and how he kept peace between 
Norman and Saxon in the manors behind 
Pevensey. The second story tells how Sir Richard 
and Hugh of Dallington went to Africa with 
Witta, a Norseman, and Kitai, a Chinese with a 
primitive mariner's compass. The third story is 
a sketch of Gilbert De Aquila, who is now Warden 
of Pevensey Castle and an old man, and the last 
tale is of Kadmiel, a Jew from Spain, who tells 
Dan and Una about Elias of Bury St. Edmunds, 
money-lender to John Lackland, who had found 
the balance of the treasure of Sir Richard Dalyng- 
ridge hidden in the tidal well at Pevensey Castle. 

Pevensey lies between Eastbourne and Hastings, 

m 



H2 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

and is easily accessible from either town. The 
whole parish, there is no doubt, was at one time 
covered with water. In addition to Pevensey 
being considered the famed Roman Station, it 
also claimed for its historic importance that it 
was here William from Normandy landed. The 
first mention of Pevensey occurs in 792, when, 
with Hastings and Rotherfield, it was handed 
over to the Abbey of St. Denis at Paris. Here it 
was that, some twenty years before the Norman 
Conquest, Sweyn, the son of the famous Godwin, 
came to meet his father, and entrapped and 
murdered his cousin Beorn. It was from 
Pevensey that William embarked a few months 
after the invasion to revisit his dominions in 
Normandy. The Castle was bestowed on the 
half-brother of William, Robert, Earl of Moreton 
Cornwall, and he, it is believed, repaired the 
fortress, and added the Norman buildings. In 
1088, William II. besieged the Castle for six weeks, 
Bishop Odo having taken refuge therein. 

Gilbert de Aquila (see Kipling's " Young Men 
at the Manor ") held the Castle under Henry L, 
while in 1144 King Stephen laid siege to it, 
but found it was too strong to be taken by storm. 
The Castle was also attacked by the young Simon 
de Montfort, in 1265, and in 1399 it was bravely 



PEVENSEY 113 

defended by Lady Pelham against the forces of 
Richard II. Several illustrious persons have 
been kept in " durance vile " in the Castle, not- 
ably, in the early part of the fifteenth century, 
Joan of Navarre, and Edward, Duke of York. 

Pevensey Church, dedicated to St. Nicholas, 
lies to the east of the Castle. It is an Early 
English edifice with a tower and spire in an 
unusual position — on the north of the church 
nearly in mid-length of nave and chancel. A 
monument to John Wheately, ob. 1616, should 
be examined. He was a parishioner of Pevensey 
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and contributed 
largely to the levy raised for the purpose of 
defence against the Spanish Armada. The Manor 
House, where he lived, occupied, it is believed, 
the site of the present market. On his crest, at 
the top of the moriument, is a wheatsheaf — a play 
on the name. The east half of the chancel was 
for some years used as a lumber room. Earlier 
still, this chancel had been used as a lodge for 
cattle. It had also uses less innocent. The Rev. 
G. D. St. Quinton, who was Curate-in-charge of 
Pevensey in 1826, tells a story (Suss. Arch. Coll., 
v « 35> P- So) of one day entering the disused 
chancel and finding a large quantity of contraband 
spirits neatly stowed under cover. A few days 

H 



H4 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

afterwards it disappeared as suddenly as it came, 
and a small keg of brandy was left on the door- 
step, apparently as a thank-offering. There is no 
doubt that under his easy going predecessors the 
place had been regularly used as a smugglers' hold. 

" Some Records of Bygone Pevensey," by the 
Rev. A. A. Evans, throws considerable light on 
Pevensey in the days of Queen Elizabeth. This 
pamphlet may be obtained in return for dropping 
twopence into an alms box in the church. 

A few passages from the extracts from the 
parish registers and old records quoted in this 
booklet may be given : 

" The Pevensey Hundred Court Book begins 1698, 
from which the following extracts are taken : 

" 1698. Wee present Wm. Dulvey and ffrancis 
Coomber for want of a bridge and stay between Monk's 
Marsh and the green lands, and that it be sufficiently 
repaired by the 25th day of March next, sub poena 10s. 

" 1699. Wee present Richard Joans and John 
Wickason for Lying about at their own Hands and 
taking away of poor men's worke. 

" 1710. Wee present John Sargent, gent., for nott 
workeing four dayes in the Highway Last Year. 

" 1711, Wee present William Albury for keeping a 
Grayhound and for destroying Coney's and other 
Gentleman's game . . . fiine 8s. 8d. 

" 1713. Wee present Mr. Wm. Plumer, Wm. Shoo- 
smith and William Winter for not removing their 
Dunghills out of the High Street in Pevensey. 



PEVENSEY 115 

" 1713. Wee present the Ditch or Sewer ffrom the 
new pump to the Horse-pound in Pevensey to be out 
of repair soo that the ffootway is nott passable. 

" 1713. Wee present John Kine for conveying the 
soyle of his dwelling into the High Street in Westham 
to the Great Annoyance of her Maties Commonweal. 

" 1 71 7. Wee present the High way leading ffrom 
the Crossways at the Gallows Croft to Stone Cross to be 
very much out of Repair and Unpassable. 

" 1717. Wee present the inhabitantt of the pish of 
Westham ffor the non-repairing of their Causey, sub 
poena 6s. 8d. 

" 1723. Wee present William Shoosmith for laying 
his Dung in the King's High street in Pevensey and 
that the same shall be removed this side the feast of 
St. James sub poena 6s. 8d. 

The name Shoosmith, which is mentioned in 
these records, is not infrequently met with in East 
Sussex at the present time, and it will be recalled 
that the old man who comes to Hobden's oast- 
house in Kipling's " Dymchurch Flit," is called 
Tom Shoosmith. 

The Corporation of Pevensey was of great 
antiquity; it took its beginnings in dim Saxon 
times, and was a full-fledged and probably hoary 
institution with Bailiff, Jurats and Freemen, when 
the Normans landed in the Bay. Its dissolution 
came about in 1886, but it had long been dying. 
The Municipal Commissioners of 1835 say: "The 



n6 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

functions of the Corporation are scarcely more 
than nominal." " The town of Pevensey is in 
such a decayed state that there are not more than 
three or four persons within the parish con- 
sidered competent for the office of Constable. 
There is only one house rated at £10. A 2d. scot 
produces £23." •' The principal items of ex- 
penditure are usually the expenses of two dinners 
provided for the Bailiff, Jurats and Freemen." 
Most of the business of the Corporation— the 
election of Bailiff and other officials — seems to 
have been done in the chancel of Pevensey Parish 
Church, in accordance with " Usages and Customs, 
of the tyme where of no mynd is." 
Here is an account of an election dinner : 

£ s. d. 
1826. J. Plumley, New Inn Peven- 
sey 
28 dinners at 2/6d. - - 3 10 o 

Negus 090 

Punch - -•'-.- - -2140 

Spirits - 0190 

Spirits mixed - - - -170 

Sugar - - - - - -020 

Porter - - - - - 7 7 

Tobacco - - - - -070 

Servants - - - - -050 

£10 7 







•aw 






PEVENSEY 117 

In the peaceful village street is the Mint Houses 
A Mint formerly existed in Pevensey, and is 
mentioned in " Domesday Book," but whether on 
this site cannot now be ascertained. There are 
four coins in the British Museum struck at the 
Pevensey Mint, belonging to the reigns of William 
the Conqueror, William Rufus and Stephen. The 
quaint gables and tiled walls of the " Mint " house 
catch the eye of every visitor. Here tradition 
saith Edward VI., the " boy-king," came to 
recruit his health, and here also lived Andrew 
Borde, the original " Merry Andrew." He was a 
man who filled many parts — Court physician to 
Henry VIII., traveller, jester, spy, and famous 
for his quips and cranks. He was the author of 
the famous " Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham," 
which is believed to refer to Gotham, a manor 
partly in the parish of Hailsham, partly in that of 
Pevensey. We owe to him the anecdotes of the 
humble-minded magistrate, who protested that 
" though Mayor of Pevensey, he was but a man " ; 
of the " freemen of the port " who drowned an 
eel as a mode of capital punishment calculated to 
be highly effectual ; and sundry other " merrie 
jests." Alas ! this man of mirth died a prisoner 
in the Fleet, 1549 A - D - 

The bridge at the end of the street is a pic- 



u8 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

turesque feature of the village, but it has grue- 
some associations. In the early Middle Ages 
Pevensey possessed the privilege, in common 
with other members of the Cinque Ports, of 
drowning prisoners condemned of capital offences, 
and here, on what was then the bridge, the sentence 
was carried out. Nothing more serious takes 
place now than sheep-washing, an annual spring 
function. The water below the bridge is locally 
known as Salt Haven, that above the bridge, the 
Broad Haven. 

Since on this ramble the reader might have 
dropped into Westham Church, which is about 
half a mile west of Pevensey, and is one of the 
most delightful old shrines in Sussex, this seems 
the place to speak of it. An excellent little penny 
history by the Vicar is to be obtained at the 
church, and it is full of plain, faithful records. 
Notice a stone stoup or vessel cut in the masonry 
outside the west door. The use of this was for 
holding holy water, into which people might dip 
their finger when coming into church. In the 
old times this stoup was at the height of a man's 
hand, but now it will be noticed that the ground 
has risen at least two feet, so that one has to bend 
down to touch it. Probably in the old days there 
was a wooden porch erected outside this w est 



PEVENSEY 119 

door. There is a sundial built into the jamb of 
the little south door of the Norman wall, and it 
affords another example of how the ground has 
risen in the churchyard to the south-west. This 
dial was probably in the old times at the height of 
a man's hand. A gaping, wide-mouthed stone 
gargoyle is built into the wall under the north- 
west eaves of the vestry roof — probably part of 
the older church. 

Three miles to the north-west is the Priesthaus, 
which was a quasi monastery in the old times. 
The Rev. Howard Hopley tells something of its 
history in his guide : 

" This has been so altered and ' restored ' at one time 
and another that if the old monks were to come again 
they would not recognise their own dwelling. As you go 
in at the door the slab of a mitred Abbot lies under the 
threshold, and this has been broken in two. But across 
the modern hall you enter what are now the kitchens and 
sculleries. Here evidently was the great dining hall of 
the monastery — massive walls on either side testifying 
to its strength against invasion. The arch of the old 
fireplace can be traced. Although this has been bricked 
up and a modern kitchener inserted into the huge opening, 
the old stonework can be seen. The roof is lofty even 
now, but it is thought that the old roof was displaced in 
Henry VII I. 's time — when the monasteries were dis- 
mantled — to make room for the chambers that are now 
above it. 



120 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

" In going up the stairs you come to these chambers — 
labyrinths of them. Most of them had been modernised, 
and the mullioned windows removed. Still here and 
there are secret places that you light upon — on the stairs 
and in the walls — suggesting grim possibilities — and 
bogey holes confront you — a terror to children : a lurking 
place for ghosts. 

" An enormous oak beam runs athwart one of the attic 
stairways. There is a bedroom, which goes by the name 
of Queen Elizabeth's bedroom, overlooking the Downs. 

" Excavations have been carried on in the garden 
towards the sunset. This magnificent square, or 
quadrangle, ramparted on two sides, is evidently an 
outline of what were once the cloisters of the monastery. 
Vaulted arcades, of course, ran all round, and in the 
centre was probably the garden, and perhaps the cemetery 
of the monks. If two diagonal lines were carried across 
the centre of the square, most likely masonry would be 
found where they met. Many of the old stones of the 
wall are still in situ, the ancient masonry intact." 

Bunny Lewknor, a teamster mentioned in 
" Simple Simon," calls to mind an old Sussex 
family name. When the story first appeared in 
" Nash's Magazine," the name was spelt Lewkner, 
but it was altered into Lewknor when published 
in book form. In Westham Church this name 
appears on a monument to John Thatcher, Esq., 
who died 3rd September, 1649, without issue, and 
was the last cf the once " noble family," as the 
inscription states, who were allied by marriage 



PEVENSEY 121 

with the families of Challenor, Lewknor, Oxen- 
bridge, Sackville, Pelham, Colepepper, Stapley, 
Tresham and Audley. They were originally of 
the Broyle, in Ringmer, and then of Priesthawes 
in Westham. 

Good fishing — pike, perch, etc., can be had in 
Pevensey Haven, which is preserved by an 
Angling Association. Tickets and information 
can be obtained from the landlord of the New Inn 
at Pevensey. 



THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON 



Chapter VII 

THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON 

The round now to be made may be too long for 
the wayfarer to take at one time, but it will be 
convenient to treat it as a whole, and then it may 
be broken up as thought convenient. Follow the 
road through Willingdon from Eastbourne until a 
turning about half a mile beyond goes to the left 
to Jevington. Another mile leads us to a turn- 
pike at which three roads converge — to the right 
Polegate ; to the left Wannock ; to the centre 
Folkington and Wilmington. Just before reach- 
ing Wilmington four roads meet : that to the 
right leads to Arlington and Michelham ; for- 
wards to Berwick, Glynde, and Lewes ; while the 
road to the left leads into Wilmington, and over 
the hill to Alfriston, and to Lullington, Litlington, 
West Dean and Seaford. 

Wilmington Priory was an " Alien " : , Priory > 
that is, a subordinate foundation, dependent on 
some great foreign (Norman) Abbey. The in- 
stitution of which Wilmington Priory was an 
offshoot was the Benedictine Abbey of Grestein, 

"5 



126 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

near Honfleur, a Norman house" which shared 
largely in the spoils of the Conquest. Some of 
these Alien Priories eventually became nearly 
independent ; that is, bound to remit only a 
portion of their revenues to the foreign house, 
whilst others remained throughout their existence 
wholly under control in almost every matter. 
Wilmington was one of the latter class. All the 
Alien Priories were suppressed in the reign of 
Henry V. 

Close by is the Long Man of Wilmington, a 
rudely excavated gigantic figure of a man, eighty 
yards in height, cut in the face of the hill. The 
figure reclines on its back with arms extended 
upwards, and there is in each hand, parallel to the 
body, a long staff or, according to Sir W. Burrell, 
a rake and hoe respectively. 

The figure of the " Giant " recalls Kipling's 
lines : 

" I will go out against the sun 
Where the rolled scarp retires, 
And the Long Man of Wilmington 
Looks naked toward the shires." 

There is little known about the Long Man, and 
when it was designed is a mystery. Some say it 
was a memorial made by the monks from the 



THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON 127 

Priory, but it is probably pre-historic. But the 
most attractive theory is that the figure is an 
image of Pol, the Sun God, pushing open the 
gates of darkness, and the town of Polegate, a 
railway junction near by, is put forward to 
strengthen the explanation. 

I made friends at Wilmington. A shepherd, 
and the master of an inn, and a dog. It happened 
like this. I, making up my mind to enjoy a 
peace-pipe and a measure of ale, had just settled 
down in the snug back-room of the inn, when 
there strode in a tall brown-faced giant with grey 
whiskers and blue eyes. He called to his sheep- 
dog " Old Ben," and it bounded in after him. 

The dog scampered about with a great deal of 
noise and his master said " Evening ! " in a loud 
happy voice. Then he called for a pint of " that 
stuff/' and sat down on the bench sighing deeply. 

I looked up. He was looking at me. I tilted 
my mug and said, " Here's to you." 

Fifteen minutes later saw us seated with the 
landlord, the dog with his nose muzzled against 
my knee, discussing all manner of things. Also 
we talked of the fascinating history and evolution 
of dew ponds. The shepherd was a mine of in- 
formation on the subject. His father had been 
accustomed to make sheep-ponds. I told him 



128 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

that dew-ponds were also constructed by the 
Flint Men. 

" I don't know nothing about foreigners, but 
my father made dunnamany ship-ponds on the 
Downs. He didn't need no books to guide him. 
There's no profit to doing things out of books. 
He was just about clever with ship-ponds. But 
it has queered many a man to make 'em." 

" How's a dew pond made ? " said the inn- 
keeper. 

" It's a tedious job," replied the shepherd. 
" You first choose your spot, and then you dig 
your pond, and line it out with a layer o' mortar. 
Then you put a load of flints in an' stamp 'em well 
down. Then you crowd more mortar on, and 
same way, you lay more flints. Then you stamp 
in a mixture of sea-sand and clay. The mixture 
is beaten in, starting from the centre by a circle, 
and trampling rings around it till at last the edge 
of the pond is reached." 

" But what is the source of the water supply ? " 
I questioned. " Is it the dew which really feeds 
the pond ? " 

" There you be ! My old father used to say 
that too," rumbled the shepherd, folding his 
brown arms. " You don't have to go out of your 
road to see that dew don't keep up ship-ponds. 



THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON 129 

They do fail in the dry season. Say we go two 
months without rain in the summer, and yet the 
dews be unaccountable heavy, do the ponds fill 
up ? Not they. Nature-ally they go dry. And 
when the rain comes they fill middlin' well again. 
The dew-pond talk is no-sense talk, surelye." 

" But they have always been called dew- 
ponds," I said, coaxingly. 

"Eh me ! We Sussex folk 'ud not call 'em 
dew-ponds. Ship-ponds — ship-ponds they be," 
said the shepherd, stretching with his huge fist, 
and smiling. " The rain feeds 'em by a deal o' 
conjurin' through little channels, same as it sinks 
through the chalk and feeds the 'normously deep 
old wells of the downland cottages." 

The shepherd crossed over to the bar, and 
sucked with his pipe at the yellow candle 
flame. 

" Do you want a bone ? " said the innkeeper to 
" Old Ben." 

" Whuff ! " barked Old Ben to show that a 
bone was just about what he expected. 

" Beef bones only," warned the shepherd. 

' It's not reasonable-like to give a ship-dog 

mutton-bones. Won'erful good dog ; can do 

anything but talk. He can walk up the side of a 

brick wall, and he's old-fashioned no bounds. 



130 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

He can see farther than most, and sometimes in 
the bostels and shaws after dark I think he may 
see things — not fur or feather or human. Who 
knows ? And he is fond of a pint of ale, too." 

The shepherd laughed softly. 

" Whuff ! Whuff ! " barked the dog, one paw 
on his bone, so suddenly that we all laughed. 

The shepherd told me that his father had an 
interesting relic in the shape of some old Sussex 
iron grappling hooks used for the extinction of 
village fires. They had been formerly kept at the 
Parish Church before his father came by them, 
and were used for pulling the thatch off a cottage 
in the event of fire. The shape was that of a long 
bar of sufficient length to reach the roof from the 
ground, with huge hooks at the end, and the 
weight was so great that several men were needed 
to handle them. 

Michelham Priory lies about four miles north of 
Wilmington. It was a house of Augustinian 
Canons founded by Gilbert de Aquila, in the 
reign of Henry III. It formed a stately quad- 
rangle, which was encircled by a broad deep 
moat, fed by the river Cuckmere, and noted as a 
favourite resort of the stealthy otter. Three fish- 
stews, supplied by the moat, are still in good 
condition. A drawbridge, now replaced by a 



THE LONG MAN OF WILMINGTON 131 

permanent bridge, was the only approach to the 
Priory. 

In the Prior's chamber here once stood a stone 
fireplace with a curious projecting funnel, and a 
pair of andirons of Sussex iron terminating in 
human heads, of the time of Henry VII. The 
Priory is now used as a farmhouse, and near the 
back door, some Early English arches seem to 
indicate the position of the Priory Chapel. The 
large parlour is Elizabethan. An arched passage, 
running parallel with the crypt — called Isaac's 
Hole — may have been the monastic Laterna or 
place of punishment. 

The old Priory mill, with its background of 
venerable trees, is an exquisite " bit " for the 
sketcher. 



SEAFORD AND THE VALLEY OF 
THE CUCKMERE 



Chapter VIII 

SEAFORD AND THE VALLEY OF THE 
CUCKMERE 

Seaford, thirteen miles east of Brighton, and 
eleven miles south-east of Lewes, formerly an 
important town, stands at the mouth of the Ouse, 
and is without doubt the ancient Mercredesburn 
(Moer-cryd, the sea-ford), the site of a great 
battle about a.d. 485, between the Saxons under 
Ella and the Britons. The history of Seaford is 
easily summed up : It was often attacked by the 
French in the time of Edward III. and was almost 
depopulated by " the black death." Claude 
d'Annebault, and his fleet, attempted to surprise 
it in 1545, but were replused by Sir Nicholas 
Pelham : 

" What time the French sought to have sackt Sea-ford 
This Pelham did repel 'em back aboord." 

The men of Seaford and the neighbouring 
villages looked upon smuggling and wrecking as 

*35 



136 . KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

high arts. Congreve has alluded to their rapacity 
in bitter lines : 

" The Sussex men that dwell upon the shore 
Look out when storms arise and billows roar, 
Devoutly praying with uplifted hands, 
That some well-laden ships may strike the sands, 
To whose rich cargo they may make pretence, 
And fatten on the spoils of Providence." 

The D'Aquilas of Chyngton, an adjoining manor, 
were a power in the county in Norman times. 
Several of Kipling's stories in " Puck of Pook's 
Hill " are concerned with the father and son — 
Engerrard of the Eagle and Gilbert, who became 
Lord of Pevensey and Warden of the King. 
The local influence of this family is distinctly 
suggested in the device of an eagle, their badge, 
upon the Seaford Borough Seal, which evidently 
belongs to the thirteenth century. The legend, 
in Roman and Gothic characters mixed, upon the 
seal reads : 

" SlGILLVM BVRGENSIVM DE SAFFORDIA," 

while that of the counter-seal of a much later 
date possibly cut in the days of Henry VIII. 
exhibits a three-masted vessel in allusion to 
Cinque Porte privileges, and the inscription meant 
to be read continuously with the other, is : 

" With Svttonii et Chyngton." 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 137 

In 1058 a Flemish vessel was driven ashore near 
Seaford. On board of her was one Balgerus, a 
monk of St. Winocs-Bergue, who is described as 
" fidelis fur et latro bonus." It would almost seem 
that he came to justify these appellations, for he 
stole from the neighbouring monastery of St. 
Andrew certain relics alleged to have belonged to 
St. Lewinna, an early British convert belonging 
to Sussex, martyred by the pagan Saxons. 
Nothing is known as to the whereabouts of this 
monastery, but possibly it was at Lewes, and 
possibly also Lewinna gave her name to, or 
received it from Lewes (Suss. Arch. Coll. i. 46). 
But Lower thinks that for " monastery " we must 
read " church," and that the narrative applies to 
St. Andrew's Church, Alfriston. 

The parish register dates from " firste year of 
Her Moste Gracious Reygne that now is " (1558). 
It has a hiatus from 1563 to 1566. In 1591 there 
is only one entry, but the register appears to be 
well kept after that date. Under 1653 the 
following entry of considerable interest occurs : 

" Mem. John Saxby, clerk, minister of the town and 
port of Seaford, was chosen parish register by the consent 
of the parish and sworn before the justices and jurats of 
the said town." 

It contains also the registration of the burial, 



138 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

on June 6th, 1796, of John Costick, who fell over 
the cliff while engaged in taking mews' eggs, and 
whose body was floated by the tide to the mouth 
of the Cuckmere, where it was found. 

The old Town Hall (now a Fire Brigade Station) 
is a relic of bygone days. Its narrow little stair- 
case on the outside, its tiny door of entrance, 
and its diminutive prison on the level of the road, 
are objects of interest to the wayfarer. 

The town chest contains records in an excellent 
state of preservation. They commence at 1562, 
and are almost perfect down to the present time. 
On a loose paper in the chest is a list of present- 
ments apparently to the Quarter Sessions, some 
of which are very quaintly put. For example : 

" We do present the good wife Pupe for mis usjring her 
tonge to the hurt of hire naybors." 

Among the findings are the following : 

" We find Thomas Woman's wife sacy upon the wit- 
ness, but she sagyte his beans and pease were spillide " 
{i.e., spoiled). 

" It that — Hyggyns . . . dothe occupy Ty filing and 
not admytted." 

The last item may require it to be explained 
that in the ancient Sussex vocabulary tippling 
meant the trade of selling liquors, and not as we 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 139 

understand it, over-indulgence in them, for 
amongst the town records is a document which 
may be regarded as the prototype of our " beer 
license," in which this word is so supplied. The 
word tipler, in the sense of a seller of ale, occurs 
likewise in other Corporation documents of this 
period. 

That the Romans had a settlement in the 
neighbourhood of Seaford is satisfactorily shown 
by a cemetery discovered in 1825, which is about 
half a mile east of Corsica Hall, along the valley. 
Here a number of sepulchral urns were exhumed, 
and another was found in the cliff near the mouth 
of the Cuckmere. 

A number of coins of Hadrian and Antoninus 
Pius were subsequently found in the neighbour- 
hood of Seaford, and in 1854 a fine medal of 
Antonia, daughter of Mark Antony, was picked 
up on the beach below high-water mark. It is of 
the finest gold, weighing 5 dwts. 3 grs., and has 
on the obverse the following legend : 

" Antonia Avgsta : Reverse, Sacerdos Divi Avgvsti." 

These coins and urns and jewellery, together 
with the encampment on the cliff between Seaford 
and the Cuckmere, show that it was evidently a 
place of importance in Roman times. 



140 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

In the garden of a house in Church Street is a 
structure called " The Folly," built over an Early 
English vaulted room, twenty-seven feet long and 
thirteen feet wide and eleven feet high. Its 
history is unknown, though Mr. Lower conjectures 
that it had something to do with St. Leonard's 
Hospital, which has long since disappeared. 
Tradition says that a Town Hall once existed 
over this crypt. 

In the old Plough Inn there is a stone chimney- 
piece of some antiquity, which is roughly carved 
with grotesque faces. 

At the top of Broad Street is a substantial old 
house, into the front of which a stone has been 
inserted, marked " 1693, 6 W.M." (sixth year 
of William and Mary). This building is known 
as the " Place House," but its history has not 
been recorded. 

A very pleasant day's cycle ride from Seaford or 
Eastbourne may be made to Alfriston — whose 
name in the local shibboleth is " Arlston " — and 
the valley of the Cuckmere. The route is through 
Old Eastbourne, East Dean and Friston as far 
as Exceat, where at a fork in the road we follow 
northwards a course more or less parallel to the 
Cuckmere as far as Berwick. In a hollow close to 
Exceat lies the picturesque and curious village of 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 141 

West Dean (about six miles from Eastbourne). 
The church here is Norman. The old Parsonage 
House of the fourteenth century abuts on the 
churchyard, and it is said that it was built by the 
monks of Wilmington. 

At West Dean, in sweltering August sunshine, I 
strolled about, smoking a packet of Black Boy 
tobacco, purchased at the local grocer's, and 
trifling with time. Everybody else did some- 
thing. I watched a farmer hanging red tiles on 
his barn — the tiles are first fitted with two little 
wooden pegs which catch on the rafters, and I 
understand that there is much skill needed to 
hang tiles in a correct manner. We may be 
certain that knowledge of this sort is older than 
ten thousand years. 

The farmer and I drew into the inn later on. I 
noticed that his eye began to water for he could 
not abide my Black Boy tobacco, and I suppose 
his mouth watered (as mine did) when the large 
jug of beer was placed on the table. 

Then we got upon the subject of dew-ponds, the 
brewing of ale, old songs, the laying of straw and 
thatching with reeds down Pevensey Marsh way. 
Such things go well with ale, and are immemorial, 
as Hilaire Belloc — a South Downs man— has 
written. I swapped old songs with the farmer. 



142 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

But his songs were the best. I am prepared to 
admit that. One was called " The True Mayde 
of the South." It was about a " Maide dwelling 
at Rie, in Sussex, who for the love of a young man 
went beyond the sea in the habit of a page." 

The farmer brought down the old faded broad- 
side with ragged margins for me to copy when I 
went back to the farm with him. It was dated 1630, 
and I might here, perhaps, be allowed to insert 
part of the old ballad, since it bears on Sussex : 

" Within the haven towne of Rye, 
That stands in Sussex faire 
There dwelt a maid whose constancie 
Transcendeth all compare. 

This turtle-dove 

Did dearly love 
A youth, who did appeare 

In mind and face 

To be the grace 
And pride of Lester-shire, 

Within short time it came to pass 
To sea the young man went, 
And left this young and pretty lass 
In woe and discontent. 

Who wept full sore, 

And grieved therefore, 
When truly she did heare, 

That her sweetheart 
Fro m her must part 
The prid e of Lester-shire. 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 143 

So in the habit of a page, 
She did entreat his lord 
That, being boy of tender age 
He would this grace afford. 

That he might goe 

Service to show. 
To him both fare and neere 

Who little thought 

What love she ought 
To the pride of Lester-shire." 

The lord, thinking she seemed a " bright and 

pretty lad," engaged her as a page, and the ballad 

follows on, after an omission of two or three 

verses which partake of rather a Rabelaisian spirit : 

" For having travelled sixe weeks 
Unknown to her lover, 
With rosie blushes in her cheeks, 
Her mind she did discover : 

' See here,' quoth she, 

' One that for thee 
Have left her parents dear — 

Poor Magery, 

The Mayde of Rie 
I am, behold me here ' ! " 

Anthony heard, and his " heart did leape with 

joy," and the noble lord looked up and down the 

mayde's graceful figure and muttered a wicked 

swear word : 

" ' Of such a page, 
In any age,' 
Quoth he, ' I did not heare.' 



144 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

At Magrum in Germany 
Their lord did see them married, 
From whence into the Town of Rye, 
In England they were carr'd ; 

Where now they dwell, 

Beloved well 
Of neighbours farre and neere ; 

Sweet Magery 

Loves Anthony 
The pride of Lester-shire." 

George Gissing has given us a picture of West 
Dean in his " Thyrza " : 

"The hamlet consists of a very few houses, all so 
compactly grouped about the old church that from this 
distance it seemed as if the hand could cover them. 
The roofs were overgrown with lichen, yellow on slate, 
red on tiles. In the farmyards were haystacks with 
yellow conical coverings of thatch. And around all 
closed dense masses of chestnut foliage, the green just 
touched with gold. The little group of houses had 
mellowed with age : their guarded peacefulness was 
soothing to the eye and the spirit." 

About one and a quarter miles beyond the 
turning up to West Dean we arrive at Litlington — 
(" Lit lying- tun," " the little enclosure ") also a 
small village. The church, which consists only 
of a nave, chancel and bell-turret, surmounted by 
a low spire, is small, but it has been neatly restored. 
The situation of the village, overlooking as it does 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 145 

the river Cuckmere, is picturesque, and here the 
wayfarer will find some delightful tea gardens. 

When I reached Litlington, the August after- 
noon seemed to give the village street a sort of 
thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet 
and hay — the farmers were all behind with their 
hay this year — and the old Plough and Harrow 
Inn, weather-tiled to the ground, took on a deep 
red shade. And over all the bees filled the hot 
August air with their humming. 

One mile beyond Litlington and directly 
opposite to Alfriston is Lullington — a very small 
village. The church deserves a visit, as it is one 
of the smallest in England. Measured externally 
it is only twenty feet long and about the same 
wide. Some ruins prove it to be only the chancel 
of a former church. 

Alfriston, which has been long in sight, is soon 
reached. Although a mere agricultural village, it 
is a place of some size, and is said once to have 
been much larger, as the size of the church indeed 
implies. There is a local saying that " one half 
of the place is asleep, and the other half on tiptoe 
lest they should wake them up ! " The chief inn, 
" The Star," is itself worthy of a visit. This 
place of entertainment dates from 1520, and is 
thought to have been a resort of religious pilgrims 

K 



146 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

travelling to Chichester. Divers curious carvings 
decorate the house inside and out. At the corner 
next the lane is a large red wooden lion once the 
figure-head of a Dutch vessel, wrecked on the 
coast sometime during the last century. Over 
this is another wood carving of two animals sup- 
porting a staff. The dexter figure is thought by 
Mr. Lower to be intended for a bear and the 
sinister for a lion, the tail of the latter being passed 
between its legs and then over its back. The 
staff appears to be an official mace surmounted by 
a coronet. Note the large slabs of stone which do 
duty for tiles and prove how strong and enduring is 
a roof tree of Sussex oak. A full account of this 
house with a good engraving of it will be found 
in Suss. Arch. Coll., iv., 309-15. 

Not far from " The Star " is what remains of a 
Village Cross. The portions that have dis- 
appeared are understood to have been employed 
in making drains and doorsteps ! (Horsfield, " Hist. 
Suss.," i. 330). 

Alfriston Church, dedicated to St. Andrew, lies 
a little out of the village towards the river. It 
is a large cruciform edifice of the fourteenth 
century, with a shingled spire. In the church- 
yard a simple headstone commemorates the fact 
that John Lower (born 1725) was the first to 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 147 

navigate the little Cuckmere with barges. Close 
to the church is an ancient vicarage of post and 
panel, illustrating the lowly abodes which the 
clergy of its day were often content with. This 
house and hall were engraved in The Builder, 
September 24th, 1892. Of the six bells in the 
church tower, the only one that is ancient is 
dedicated to St. Augustine. 

The registers of the church are of great interest, 
inasmuch as the entries in them are of an earlier 
period than we usually find in such records. 
Entries of marriages commence in the year 1504, 
whereas the official order to keep such records 
was not sent out till 1538. A curious entry which 
is worthy of note reads : 

" Mildred Reed, buried Jan. 12-1816, aged 24." 

Underneath this entry is the following note : 

" A rumour having gone forth that this young woman 
was buried alive, her grave was opened eleven days after 
her interment in the presence of the minister of the 
parish, one of the churchwardens, the medical gentleman 
who attended her in her last illness, and a great multitude 
of people, all of whom on inspection of the body, were 
perfectly satisfied that the rumour was unfounded : 
although one old man who is very deaf said he heard a 
noise proceed from the grave two or three days preceding 
the exhumation. John Benn, Curate." 



148 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

The Market Cross House, an ancient hotel 
standing opposite the cross, should be visited. 
It boasts twenty bedrooms and the stranger is 
puzzled among the maze of passages and tangle 
of communicating doors. It is said that it was 
once a rendezvous of smugglers. The old house 
contains secret hiding-places, recesses in walls, 
abandoned fireplaces, a few stray ghosts, and 
behaves itself just as any house that can be 
traced back for nine hundred years should. 

Those who desire to dwell at greater length on 
the history and romance of the little town should 
obtain Miss Florence A. Pagden's " History of 
Alfriston." 

The name " Alfriston " has been thought to be 
Alfred's Tun, although some etymologists regard 
it as a compound of " old " and " Friston," to 
distinguish it from the other Friston, a few miles 
to the south. But in the " Domesday Book " the 
name is spelt " Alvricestone." 

Berwick is a retired village a little over a mile 
north of Alfriston. The church contains a font 
built into the wall, an old chancel screen, and in 
the south-west corner of the churchyard is a 
curious mound, which is rather a puzzle to the 
student of antiquities. 

Berwick Court, a farmhouse near this place, 



SEAFORD AND CUCKMERE VALLEY 149 

boasts an old pigeon house which deserves notice. 
It is of unknown date, but was in existence in 
1622. A record in a parish book reads that it 
was then rented to the parson for five pounds a 
year. (See Suss. Arch. Coll., vi. 233). 

Firle Beacon is four and a half miles due north 
of East Blatchington, and is placed in the Downs 
at an angle where they run south to Beachy 
Head. Applied to it is the proverb : 

" When Firle Beacon wears a cap 
We in the valley gets a drap ; 
When Firle Beacon's head is bare 
All next day it w ; ll be fair." 

The village beneath is called West Firle, but 
why is not known, for the only other Firle is the 
farm of Frog Firle in Alfriston. 

All the hills about are crowded with ancient 
burrows, and Rudyard Kipling has given us the 
couplet : 

" Firle, Mount Caburn and Mount Harry 
Go back as far as sums'll carry." 

Firle Place, with high roofs like a French 
chateau, occupies a pleasant situation in a park, 
and commands extensive views of the surrounding 
country and of the Weald. The hall is a perfect 
museum, chiefly of zoological objects, and the 



150 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

picture gallery has many valuable paintings, 
particularly one by Holbein of Sir John Gage, 
who held important offices in the Court of Henry 
VIII. The chair constantly used by Napoleon I. 
at St. Helena is among the relics here. 

" The Tramp " in his charming book on the 
South Downs, gives the following route for an 
invigorating twelve-mile walk in this area : 

" I should be disposed to recommend a circuit from 
Seaford by footpath to Bishopstone, thence by a con- 
tinuing footpath to Denton. From South Heighton, 
just beyond, go north by the Down track to Beddingham, 
already mentioned, and so come gradually to Beddingham 
Hill. Now, turning east, keep to the crest of the hiUs for 
rather more than three miles — to beyond the summit of 
Bostal Hill. Here a track from Alciston crosses. This 
strikes south-westward and is a direct way back to East 
Blatchington and Seaford." 



NEWHAVEN AS A CENTRE 



Chapter IX 

NEWHAVEN AS A CENTRE 

If Newhaven is taken as a centre, and a part 
circle is struck with a five-mile radius, Rotting- 
dean comes just within the arc, also the Ouse 
villages of Piddinghoe, Southease, Rodmell and 
Telscombe. 

At first Kipling made his home at Rottingdean, 
in the old house which faces the vicarage, where 
the Duke of Wellington, Cardinal Manning and 
Lord Lytton received their education ; but the 
curiosity of literary pilgrims drove him to a 
stronghold at Burwash. 

Of course, the church at Rottingdean has long 
been a place of pilgrimage for all who admire the 
work of Sir Edward Burne- Jones or William Black. 

When Kipling lived at " The Elms/' near the 
church, he was much discomforted by a driver 
of the local 'bus who often pointed his whip when 
he encountered the poet, and announced in a 
stentorian voice to his human freight : " Here we 
have Mr. Kipling, the soldier : poet." Kipling 

153 



154 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

suffered this in silence, but things came to a crisis 
when the Jehu came into collision with his 
favourite tree, doing much damage to it. He 
wrote at once a vigorous letter of complaint to the 
'bus owner, who was landlord of the " White 
Horse Inn." 

Boniface laid the letter before the select com- 
pany of his bar parlour, who, one and all, advised 
calm indifference. Also a man with an eye to 
the main chance offered the landlord ten shillings 
in cash for the autograph letter. Both cash and 
advice were accepted. A second and stronger 
letter followed, and Boniface carried the autograph 
to a bookseller and demanded a pound for it, since 
the violence of the letter was quite double strength. 
The bookseller eagerly snapped it up, and the 
merry landlord warmed to the game, dreaming of 
more missives. But next day Kipling entered 
briskly and very wrathful. 

" Why don't I answer your letter, sir ? Why 
I was hoping you'd send me a fresh one every day. 
They pay a deal better than 'bus driving." 

Two roads, both hilly and dusty, connect 
Newhaven with the county town, Lewes ; and 
the river Ouse takes a circuitous course between 
them. Along the western road a mile north of 
Newhaven we come to Piddinghoe. 



NEWHAVEN AS A CENTRE 155 

The " gilded vane " of Piddinghoe Church no 
doubt induced Kipling to introduce this hamlet 
into his " Sussex " : 

" Where Piddinghoe 's gilt dolphin veers, 
And where, beside wide-banked Ouse, 
Lie down our Sussex steers." 

But Mr. Kipling is not correct, for the weather- 
vane is a fish ! 

This village, according to a local saying, is the 
place where they " shoe magpies." The meaning 
of this saying is obscure, but it tempts the sugges- 
tion that perhaps some Sussex wit was playing on 
the words " shoe " and " shoo." The other 
suggestion is that the land about here is so muddy 
that even the feathered inhabitants require foot- 
wear. Of course the village has been a famous 
nest of land-pirates and water-pirates on account 
of its seclusion, and for the same reason the 
villagers escaped the clutches of the press-gang. 
We have this fact commemorated in the old local 
rhyme : 

" Englishmen fight, Frenchmen too ; 
We don't — we live at Piddinghoe." 

Two other curious sayings connected with this 

hamlet are : 

" At Piddinghoe they dig for moonshine." 
" At Piddinghoe they dig for smoke." 



156 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

which can only be explained by supposing that 
they allude to the underground secret places of 
smuggling days. The little church, on a small 
hill sloping steeply to the river, is remarkable from 
the fact that it has a round tower which ends with 
a short conical cap. Only three such towers 
exist in Sussex, all in the valley of the Ouse ; the 
others being St. Michael's at Lewes, and the 
Southease Parish Church, three miles north from 
Newhaven. 

A mile north of Southease lies the village of 
Rodmell, whose church has a Norman baptistry 
and font ; a Norman hagioscope with central 
carved column of black basaltic marble ; a quarry 
of ancient glass, a Trinita ; in its vestry window, 
a noticeable massive pier between nave and south 
aisle, and a remnant of a carved wooden screen 
at the east end of the latter. 

On the walls of the parlour of the village inn 
are some warnings and precepts which will attract 
the eye of the tourist : 

" Free to sit and free to think, 
Free to pay for what you drink, 
Free to stop an hour or so, 
When uneasy, free to go ! " 

" Use no language in this room that you would scorn 
to use at home." 



NEWHAVEN AS A CENTRE 

" Call frequently. 
Drink moderately. 
Pay honourably. 
Be good company. 
Part friendly. 
Go home quietly." 



157 



j pint 

4 quarts , 

2 gallons , 

1 argument , 

1 quarrel , 

1 fight 

1 magistrate 

1 policeman , 

1 magistrates' clerk , 



TABLE 

makes 



■ 1 quart. 
1 gallon. 
1 argument. 
1 quarrel. 

1 fight. 

2 policemen. 

"1 Twenty shillings 

or 
J Fourteen days. 



Telscombe, a favourite spot for smuggling 
operations in the past, is a good walk from 
Brighton or Lewes for hillmen who " desire their 
hills." It is a charming and retiring little hamlet, 
out of reach of the blight of modernism, snugly 
nuzzling in its combe, above Piddinghoe. Kipling 
in " Brother Square Toes " refers to this district : 

" The tide was dead low under the chalk cliffs and the 
little wrinkled waves grieved along the sands up the 
coast to Newhaven and down the coast to long, grey 
Brighton." 

In another part of this story the Sussex family 



158 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

of smugglers of the French Revolution days is 
introduced : 

" Aurettes and Lees^ 
Like as two peas. 
What they can't smuggle, 
They'll run overseas ? " 

Pharaoh Lee is the hero of another story, " A 
Priest in Spite of Himself," and as he explained, 
came from a family who, omitting a little running 
of contraband cargo, were all honest cottage folk 
— at Warminghurst under Washington. Puck 
supplements the tradition of the same family with 
an old saying : 

" There was never a Lee to Warminghurst 
That wasn't a gipsy last and first." 

This saw takes us to Warminghurst which 
nestles among the trees, one mile north of Ash- 
ington, and one and quarter miles west of the 
Worthing and Horsham road. A long but plea- 
sant day's excursion may be made from Worthing 
to this village, by way of Sompting, Findon and 
Washington ; returning through Sullington, across 
the downs to Clapham, and home by way of 
Durrington, Salvington and West Tarring. 

The view from the hill on which Warminghurst 



NEWHAVEN AS A CENTRE 159 

is perched embraces a considerable portion of the 
east of Sussex. From this site of the ancient 
manor-house the prospect eastward extends to 
the windmill at Cross-in-Hand, and the monument 
to the memory of " the hero of Gibraltar," at 
Heathfield. 

The church is early English, with a large 
pointed east window, temp. Edward III. A brass, 
with figures of a man and woman, their seven sons 
and three daughters, commemorates Edward 
Shelley, d. 1554, Master of the Household to 
Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Mary, and 
his wife Joan, d. 1553. 

North-east of Newhaven lie the three con- 
tiguous villages of Denton, South Heighton and 
Tarring-Neville, which are worth visiting. They 
have been commemorated by the jesters of the 
Downs as " Heighton, Denton and Tarring all 
begin with an A." Bishopstone, which may be 
easily reached from Newhaven, has a remarkable 
church. The tower rises in four stages, each 
gradually diminishing in diameter. The chancel 
is in two divisions, with Norman and English 
arches. Observe the curious porch, and the 
Saxon sun-dial over the door, lettered with the 
name of some Saxon king, Eadric, who was prob- 
ably its builder. A stone slab, inscribed with a 



i6o KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

cross, bearing in circular compartments the Agnus 
Dei, and the symbol of two doves drinking should 
be carefully examined. It appears to be the work 
of some Norman sculptor, who, however, was not 
ignorant of the spirit and influences of Italian art. 
A monument in the chancel commemorates the 
Rev. John Hurdis, Oxford Professor of Poetry, 
and an agreeable didactic rhymester, d. 1801. 
The epitaph is by Hay ley. Hurdis was Vicar of 
Bishopstone, 1791, and Curate of Burwash from 
1786 to 1791, and lived at the house called Fryls. 



A VISIT TO LEWES 



Chapter X 

A VISIT TO LEWES 

Lewes is the county town of Sussex. It lies 
chiefly on the right bank of the small river Ouse, 
on the slope of a chalk hill, one of the glorious 
South Downs, and others of that famous range 
are raised around it so as to shelter it, on almost 
every side. 

It principally consists of one street — the High 
Street — winding from St. Anne's Church, east, to 
the foot of Cliffe Hill, west, about three-quarters 
of a mile, where it throws out two branches. One, 
named South Street, leads to Glynde, Firle, 
Alfriston and Eastbourne ; the other, Mailing 
Street, to Uckfield, East Grinstead and so to 
London. 

" Proud Lewes and poor Brighthelmstone " is 
a proverb that no longer holds good, but from 
another old saying it would seem that Lewes 
formerly bore no enviable character. We are 
told: 

" Lewes skin a rat, for its hide and fat \ " 
*3 



164 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

The Castle stands on high ground in the centre 
of the town, close to the High Street ; the remains 
are not extensive, but the gate-house is a good 
specimen of the architecture of the reign of 
Edward III. It is the property of the Lords of 
Lewes Castle, viz., The Marquess of Abergavenny, 
K.G., the Earl De La Warr and Lord Sackville, 
by whom it is leased to the Sussex Archaeological 
Society. The visitors to the Castle number about 
6,000 a year. 

From the top of Station Street, the reader may 
begin a walk through the town. Going west, the 
following places are of interest : White Hart 
Hotel, old gabled houses, old clergy house, 
Barbican House (Sussex Archaeological Society), 
old gabled house at top of St. Martin's lane, Tom 
Paine's house, Unitarian Chapel. From the top 
of Station Street, going east : Old Rectory House 
of St. John, Town Hall, Lewes Bridge. From 
the railway station, going south, and then turn- 
ing to the right, through Priory Street : Southover 
Church, Priory ruins, Anne of Cleve's house. 

From the Old Bank, High Street, to Market 
Street and North Street : Old Market Tower, with 
the ancient bell " Gabriel " : 

" Oh, happy Lewes, waking or asleep, 
With faithful hands your time archangels keep ! 



A VISIT TO LEWES 165 

5. Michael's voice the fleeting hour records, 
And Gabriel loud repeats his brother's words ; 
While humble Cliff eites, ruled by meaner power, 
By Tom the Archbishop regulate their hour." 

M. A. Lower, epigram on the 
Lewes Clocks. (The parish church 
of Cliffe is dedicated to S. Thomas a 
Becket.) 

The Town Hall was formerly the " Star Hotel," 
and was purchased by the Corporation in 1890. 

The building is of red brick and Portland stone 
in the Renaissance style. It possesses a fine oak 
staircase, which was brought from Slaugham 
Place, near Cuckfield, in the eighteenth century, 
and was placed in the Star Hotel. This staircase 
is Elizabethan, and is well worth an inspection. 
The Council Chamber and Mayor's Parlour are of 
considerable age, and are the only two original 
rooms of the Star Hotel remaining. 

It was at the " sign of the Starre " in 1556 that 
six Protestants were burnt, and ten more met a 
similar fate in the following year, during the 
episcopacy of Bishop Christopherson, of whom 
Fuller observes that though carrying much of 
Christ in his surname, he did bear nothing of Him 
in his nature. Rudyard Kipling only mentions 
Lewes once in his Sussex stories. In " Friendly 
Brook " we learn that " Jim Wickenden's woman 



166 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

. . . come out of Lewes with her stockings round 
her heels, an' she never made nor mended aught 
till she died." The following books on matters of 
local interest can be seen at the Lewes Library : 

** Barons' War," by W. H. Blaauw. 

" Battaile of Lewes and other Legends," by A. Lee. 

" Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect," by Rev. W. D. 
Parish. 

" Discovery of the remains of William de Warrenne," 
by Dr. G. A. Mantell. 

" Fossil Reptiles of the South-east of England," by Dr. 
G. A. Mantell. 

" Fossils of the Southdowns," by Dr. G. A. Mantell-" 

" History of Lewes," by T. H. Horsfield. 

" History of Sussex," by T. H. Horsfield. 

" History of Sussex," by M. A. Lower. 

" History of Lewes," by Paul Dun van (W. Lee). 

" Lewes Men of Note," by G. Holman. 

" Nooks and Corners of Old Sussex," by Rev. P. de 
Putron. 

" Ovingdean Grange," by Harrison Ainsworth. 

There are seven churches in the town : All 
Saints, in Friars' Walk, rebuilt in 1807. The 
ancient tower still remains. Southover. This 
church contains a mortuary chapel in which are 
deposited the remains of William de Warrenne 
and Gundrada, his wife (daughter of William the 
Conqueror). 

St. Michael's, in the High Street. The front is 










Reproduced by permission from 

" The Story of Stissex," by W . Victor Cook 



[To face page 166 



A VISIT TO LEWES 167 

built of square flints, and has a Norman round 
tower. Among the monuments in the church is 
one to a member of the Pelham family, who 
resisted a French attack upon Seaford in 1545. 

St. Anne's, a Transitional building, has a fine 
Norman doorway and font. In the churchyard 
is the tomb of Mark Antony Lower, a Sussex 
historian. " The pulpit is a rejuvenated specimen 
of Jacobean wood-carving, by no means an unin- 
teresting piece of work. It was the gift — if not the 
handiwork also — of a certain Herbert Springett, 
one of the family of that name which flourished 
for a space at Broyle Place, Ringmer. An incised 
inscription tells us, 

" HAR . BAR . SPRINGAT . GEN . TEL .- MAN . MADE . 
THIS . PULPIT . IN . THE . YEARE . OF . OUR . LORD . 

1620." 

It will be recalled that the builder in Kipling's 
story, " The Wrong Thing/' is called Ralph 
Springett. He was a man who did not believe in 
doing things in a hurry, and when he built he 
built for the ages. No two feet concrete founda- 
tions and jerry-built houses for him ! If you ask 
a Sussex man why he ploughs so deeply, or why 
he goes down five feet for his concrete foundation, 
he will reply in a phrase which is commonly in use 



168 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

in Sussex like an adage or motto — " We do it that 
way for the good of the land." That has a fine 
sound — a respect for the " fellow-clay " that 
nourished them, and we can well imagine that 
this same spirit was shared by the other Springett 
when he carved and lettered the pulpit for St. 
Anne's Church in 1620. 

St. Thomas-a-Becket, at Cliff e, principally of 
the Perpendicular period. 

St. John-sub-Castro, a modern and not at all 
ornamental edifice, built about seventy-five years 
ago in place of a Saxon building. The arch of one 
doorway has been preserved, also a curious Latin 
inscription relating to one Magnus, who, according 
to tradition, was a son of King Harold by his 
second wife Githa, sister of the Danish King, 
Sweyn. 

South Mailing, built about 1628, on the site of a 
Saxon building. 

The coffins of William de Warrenne and his 
Countess were discovered in October 1845, during 
the works carried on for the construction of the 
London and Brighton Railway. A cutting forty 
feet wide and twelve feet deep was required, and 
this cutting was made across the site, as it proved, 
of part of the ancient Priory Church, and the 
adjoining chapter-house. Here, about two feet 



A VISIT TO LEWES 169 

beneath the turf, were discovered the coffins of the 
Earl and Countess, now preserved at Southover 
Church. 

In Kipling's verses, " The Land," Hobden's 
father's father, Hob of the Dene, is spoken of as 
Bailiff to William of Warenne. There is a touch 
in this poem which must give the reader an 
exalting sense of continuity — a sense of our one- 
ness with the past. Warenne had not been long 
installed in his English manor when the " brook 
got up no bounds," and threatened to swamp the 
lands. To Hobden he repaired and asked what 
was to be done about holding back the water, and 
Hob — the same Hob I aled with in a Burwash 
inn — smiled quietly to himself. Hob knew. Said 
he: 

" When you can't hold back the water you must try 
and save the sile." 

So William took his advice, and staked the 
banks of the watercourse with willow trees, and 
planks of elm and " immortal oaken knees." 
To-day if you follow the brook between Willing- 
ford Bridge and Dudwell Mill, at Burwash, you 
may still see the faithful fragments of oak set fast 
in the clay. 

From Lewes a good excursion could be made all 



170 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

round the villages of South Mailing, Ringmer and 
Glynde. It was to South Mailing the four 
knightly murderers of Thomas-a-Becket rode 
with whip and spur, after their dreadful deed. 
" On entering the house, they threw off their 
arms and trappings on the large dining-table 
which stood in the hall, and after supper gathered 
round the blazing hearth ; suddenly the table 
started back, and threw its burden on the ground. 
The attendants, roused by the crash, rushed in 
with lights and replaced the arms. But soon a 
second still louder crash was heard, and the various 
articles were thrown still further off. Soldiers 
and servants with torches searched in vain under 
the solid table to find the cause of its convulsions, 
till one of the conscience-stricken knights sug- 
gested that it was indignantly refusing to bear the 
sacrilegious burden of their arms." So ran the 
popular story ; and as late as the fourteenth 
century it was still shewn in the same place — the 
earliest and most memorable instance of a 
" ' rapping,' ' leaping ' and ' turning ' table " — 
(Stanley). 

Two miles beyond Mailing, we arrive at Ring- 
mer, which is linked with the name of White of 
Selborne, who was accustomed from this point 
to pursue his delightful labours in the grand 



A VISIT TO LEWES 171 

laboratory of nature. Though he had travelled 
the Sussex Downs for upwards of thirty years, yet 
he could still investigate " that chain of majestic 
mountains with fresh admiration year by year." 
Ringmer lies at the base of Mount Caburn. Here 
the deep shadowy coombes, and the patches of 
fragrant thyme, will fill the wayfarer with delight. 
The green paths that wind across these downs 
are called " Borstalls " — from Beorh-stegele, hill- 
paths, according to Kemble. 

The church (St. Mary) contains several monu- 
ments to the Springett family, including that of 
" the charitable Springett " — 

" Redresse he did the wrongs of many a wight, 
Fatherlesse and widows by him possesse their right." 

Glynde is pleasantly situated below Mount 
Caburn. There is a large dairy here. Further 
east are the old-world villages of Ripe and 
Chalvington, with Chiddingly to the north (with 
ruins of the old mansion, the original home of the 
Jefferies, and several ancient farmhouses), each 
with its ancient church. 

But the wayfarer must go to the top of the 
conical Mount Caburn. Within it are many 
shallow pits, the site of the hut dwellings of the 
Flint Men. Here the bee orchis — the " freckled 



i 7 2 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

cowslip " of our Shakespeare — appears in the late 
spring. Here too we find the circular growth of 
fungus known as " hag-tracks," and still believed 
to be the rings of " pharisees " hereabouts. This 
name for fairies is really an irregular plural, of a 
type common in Sussex speech : 

" I saw three ghostesses 
Sitting on three post esses." 

would sound quite right to Sussex ears. 

It was with a very lively imagination that 
Gilbert White speaks of the " chain of majestic 
mountains," but here is a description and experi- 
ence which is interesting : 

" There is a remarkable hill on the Downs near Lewes, 
in Sussex, known by the name of Mount Caburn (White's 
spelling gives the Sussex value to the vowel), which over- 
looks the town, and affords a most engaging prospect of 
all the country round, besides several views of the sea. 
On the very summit of this exalted promontory, and 
amidst the trenches of its Danish (sic) camp, there haunts 
a species of wild bee, making its nest in the chalky soil. 
When people approach the place these insects begin to 
be alarmed, and with a sharp and hostile sound, dart 
and strike round the heads and faces of intruders. I 
have often been interrupted myself while contemplating 
the grandeur of the scenery round me and have thought 
myself in danger of being stung." 

A walk of about eight miles by road from 



A VISIT TO LEWES 173 

Lewes brings the reader to Uckfield. The town 
mainly consists of one long street, lining the high 
road to Tunbridge Wells. The neighbourhood is 
rich in attractive landscapes — woodland and 
meadow, and cornfield and brown ridges of heathy 
hills — combining in pictorial effects of great 
interest and beauty. But the Kiplingite will 
make Buxted the Mecca of this jaunt, which 
village can be gained by taking a footpath out 
of the High Street at Uckfield which leads through 
Buxted Park. The old house at the beginning 
of the footpath, and near the church,* with a hog 
and 15 8 1 carved over the facade in bas-relief, was 
the residence of Ralph Hogge. Ralph Hogge 
brings to mind Rudyard Kipling's story of the 
Sussex ironworks — " Hal o' the Draft " — for the 
first cannons cast in England were manufactured 
at his forge near Buxted. Hogge was assisted by 
Peter Baude, a Frenchman, and Peter Van Collet, 
a Flemish gunsmith. Bombs, fawconets, faw- 
sons, nimions and sakers, and other kinds of 

*Buxted old church is one of the finest in East Sussex. 
Notice the splendid brass of Rector Avenel on the chancel 
floor, and the curious muniment chest in the north aisle — 
this is thirteenth century. Richard Woodman, the 
martyr, and great ironmaster of Warbleton, is believed 
to have been a native of Buxted, 



174 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

ordnance were here produced. The name of 
Hogge seems to have been confounded with 
that of Huggett ; and there is a place on the 
confines of Buxted and Mayfield, called Huggett 's 
furnace, where, according to tradition, the first 
iron ordnance was cast. The traditionary distich 
that : 

" Master Huggett and his man John, 
They did cast the first can-non." 

is firmly believed in the locality. Many persons 
of the name of Huggett still carry on the trade of 
blacksmith in East Sussex. 

Buxted was one of the " iron-towns " of the 
Weald, and we are reminded how England put 
her trust in Sussex iron and Sussex oak in Puck's 
song : 

" See you the dimpled track that runs, 
All hollow through the wheat ? 
O that was where they hauled the guns 
That smote King Philip's fleet." 

The noble trees of the Weald were cut down 
without any consideration to feed the rapacious 
forges : 

" Jove's oak, the warlike ash, veined elm, the softer beech, 
Short hazel, maple, plane, light asp, the bending wych, 
Tough holly, and smooth birch, must altogether burn." 



A VISIT TO LEWES 175 

But later on the introduction of coal for manu- 
facturing purposes removed the furnaces to the 
northern counties. The decline of the Sussex 
iron manufacture dates from the production of 
iron in the northern coalfields. In 1740 there 
were fifty-nine furnaces in England, and ten of 
these were in Sussex ; in 1788, there were seventy- 
seven, but only two in Sussex ; and in 1796, while 
England possessed 104, Sussex had but one! 
Many of the great Sussex families owed their 
prosperity to this now extinct staple. " In the 
days of Elizabeth, the Ashburnhams, the Pel- 
hams, the Montagues, the Nevilles, the Sidneys, 
the Sackvilles, the Dacres, the Stanleys, the 
Finches, the Gages and even the Percys and the 
Howards, did not disdain such lucre, but pursued 
it to the destruction of old ancestral oak and 
beech, and with all the apparent ardour of Birm- 
ingham and Wolverhampton men of these times. 
We may add after these the Culpepers, the Dykes, 
the Barrels, the Apsleys, the Coverts, the Merleys, 
the Shirleys, the Burrells, the Greshams, the 
Bulldens, the Grativekes, and the Fullers. Con- 
cerning the last family, which is mentioned by 
Kipling in ' Gloriana,' there is a tradition that 
the first of the house in Sussex gained his fortune 
by hawking nails about the country on the back of 



176 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

donkeys. This is rather a tale to throw to the 
gay and gallant marines ; but at the same time it 
is generally thought that the family drew a great 
revenue from the forges in the Weald — a fact 
which is indeed frankly avowed in their singular 
motto : ' Carbone et forcipibus.' " 

An interesting relic of the iron times was to be 
seen at Howbourne, in this parish — an old hammer- 
post on the marge of the once extensive but 
now drained pond. It was formed of an oak 
tree, and in excellent preservation. Its height 
above ground was 9 \ feet. It has now been 
removed. 

Eridge Green, about ten miles distant, near a 
feeder of the Medway, and three miles from Tun- 
bridge Wells, has the x only inn in Sussex, " The 
Gun," which takes its name from the iron trade 
of days gone by, but the Sussex historian states 
that the following names, which recall the vanished 
industry, can be found within ten miles of East 
Grinstead : Furnace Pond, Forge Pond, Wirewell 
Pond, Hammer Pond, Casiron, Shovel-strode, 
Horseshoe Farm, Cinder Hill, Cinder Banks. 

Mayfield, about ten miles from Tunbridge 
Wells, is a delightful old village, particularly rich 
in old gabled and timbered houses, the best of 
which is Middle House (dated 1575). The 



1^ • '•' ' : v > 






^4 



\ 



s^ 9B, 










> bo 




\ 



_* 



A VISIT TO LEWES 177 

convent here was anciently a palace of the Arch- 
bishops of Canterbury, and is associated in legend 
with the famous tale of St. Dunstan and the Devil. 
A sign by Mr. Geoffrey Webb for this village was 
placed second in the recent Village Signs Com- 
petition. The name May field is derived from 
O. E. M«g, a maid, and means the Maid's Field. 
Both sides of the sign represent the maid in a field 
powdered with spring flowers, including the spiked 
rampion (found only in Mayfield and the adjoining 
parish and nowhere else in the British Isles) under 
a bower of twisted white thorn or may. She is 
crowned and wreathed with flowers by two 
children. The east face of the sign shows the 
maid crowning a third child with a daisy-chain ; 
on the west face she holds a wreath with tablet 
explaining the name of the place. 

The first mortar made in this country of which we 
have any knowledge was that made at Eridge 
Green ; it consisted of small bars of wrought-iron, 
bound together by hoops, and with a polygonal 
chamber in one solid piece. From 1543 the 
manufacture of heavy ordnance increased, and an 
export trade sprang up, until the licence granted 
by the Lord High Admiral in 1572 was revoked 
in the autumn of the same year. In spite of this, 
however, the surreptitious exportation of cannon 

M 



T78 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

continued during the next fifteen years ; until in 
1587 the Earl of Warwick made an agreement 
with the gunfounders that a fixed quantity of 
cannon should be cast annually for the Govern- 
ment, and that the work should be distributed 
equally among them. They, on their part, under- 
took that no ordnance should be sold except in 
London, and to such merchants " as my lord or 
his deputy should name." This was brought 
about by the fear of the Spaniards. 

Other branches of the iron trade were not 
neglected ; church bells, tombstones and fire- 
backs were made in great abundance. In the 
museum of the Sussex Archaeological Society at 
Lewes, the collection of Sussex ironwork is worthy 
of inspection. One seventeenth century fireback 
to be seen at Lewes represents a Sussex iron- 
founder and the implements of his trade. In 
this the ironfounder is seen with his immense 
hammer, and his faithful hound is jumping up to 
him. The inscription on it reads : " Richard 
Leonard, at Brede Fournis, 1636." 

Richard Woodman, one of the ten Sussex 
martyrs burnt at Lewes, was an ironmaster at 
Warbleton. He says, in one of his examinations 
before the Bishop of Winchester, " Let me go 
home, I pray you, to my wife and children, to 



A VISIT TO LEWES 179 

see them kept, and other poore folk that I would 
set a-worke. By the help of God, I have set 
a-worke a hundred persons ere this, all the year 
together." 

A good tramp from Lewes is out west by Black- 
cap to Ditchling. The villages of Falmer and 
Stanmer are also west of Lewes, the latter with its 
beautiful park, thick with woods that clothe the 
combes and slopes of the encompassing downland. 
But more interesting is Ditchling, lying about 
six miles north-west, on the road between the 
county town and Hassocks. It has some pic- 
turesque old timbered houses, in one of which 
perchance Anne of Cleves dwelt once upon a time. 
To the south-east rises Ditchling Beacon, more 
than 800 feet high, crowned by an ancient hill- fort. 

At Ditchling resided one Mr. Thomas Burgess, 
who, before he emigrated to New York, in 1815 or 
so, took it into his head to keep a diary, and long- 
afterwards to write letters to his kinsfolk at home. 
Practice did not improve him as an etymologist, 
while his orthography was very wild indeed. Mr. 
Burgess, who was a Particular Baptist and a lay 
preacher, informs us, under March 14th, 1788, 
that he " went to Fryersoake to a Bull Bait to see 
My dog I seld him for 1 guineay upon Condition 
he was hurt, but as he receivd no Hurt I took 



i8o KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

him again at the same price I had all my Ex- 
pences paid Because I had a dog there was 5 or 
6 dogs but mine was Calld the best. We had a 
good dinner, a round of Beef Boild a good piece 
roasted a Lag of mutton and Ham of Pork and 
plum pudden plenty of wine & punch all the 
after Noon there was a great many people." 

Only once he recorded of himself that he 
"Washed in Ye Sea." 

Ditchling has suddenly sprung into fame in the 
newspaper world ! In May, 1920, the first village 
news-sheet was produced at Ditchling by Mr. 
Gerard Meynell. The first number, printed on 
two sides of a single sheet, gives utterance to local 
grievances — such as that of being " thrown into 
the ditch by motor charabancs full of trippers " — 
rebukes the discrepancies of the village clock, 
publishes the bus time-table, has its poets' corner, 
gives full reports of the cricket club's perform- 
ances and offers a tip for the Derby. 

The poets of Ditchling have come forward with 
some rather good things, one of which runs as 
follows : 

" The bricks and tiles are red and brown, 
In the roofs and walls of Ditchling Town, 
Tangled roofs and cottages neat, 
Clustered together where four roads meet — 
Ditchling under the Hill. 



A VISIT TO LEWES 181 

Overhead the swallows fly 
Like shuttles across the loom of the sky, 
Along the road the children play, 
And the roar of the world is far away — 
From Ditchling under the Hill. 

You may tramp to the east, you may toil in the 

west, 
But this is the place to take your rest ; 
And Ditchling Town is the place for me, 
In the lazy land by the southern sea — 

Ditchling Town, that's under the Hill." 

B. A. T. 

Mr. E. V. Lucas, in his " Highways and By-ways 
in Sussex," reminds us of the old lady living in 
this neighbourhood who, before she made her 
first visit to London, was asked what kind of a 
place she expected to see, and replied, " Well, I 
can't exactly tell, but I suppose something like 
the more bustling part of Ditchling." 

On Ditchling Common is a most interesting 
memento of the days of gibbets. The grim 
memory of one Jacob Harris, a Jew pedlar, is per- 
petuated in a stake of wood called Jacob's Post. 
This scoundrel, after murdering three people at a 
local inn and robbing their house, was hanged 
and then gibbeted at this post in 1734. 



NEAR WORTHING 



Chapter XI 

NEAR WORTHING 

In " Traffics and Discoveries " is a story con- 
cerned with the hamlet of Washington. This 
story is " They." The village is four miles west 
of Steyning, just by the road over the Findon Gap 
to Worthing. 

Washington has had more than its share of 
fame, and serves to call to the reader's mind 
Hilaire Belloc's vigorous song of the ale of the 
Washington Inn, and his book on " The Four 
Men," in which he indulges in his. humours on 
behalf of Sussex against Kent and the rest of the 
inhabited world. From the following quotation it 
will be understood that the Washington Inn is 
the true fount of that great and generous gift of 
the goddess Ceres — Old Ale. 

Myself ; " Have you heard of Washington Inn ? " 
Grizzlebeard : " Why, yes, all the world has heard of 
it ; and when Washington, the Virginian, a general 
overseas, was worriting his army together a long time 
ago, men hearing his name would say : ' Washington ? 
. . . Washington ? . . . I know that name.' Then 

185 



186 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

would they remember the inn at Washington, and smile. 
For fame is of this character. It goes by the sound of 
names." 

The Poet : " For what, then, is the inn of Washington 
famous ? " 

The Sailor : " Not for a song, but for the breeder of 
songs. You shall soon learn." 

And when he had said that we all went in 
together, and, in the inn of Washington, we put 
it to the test whether what so many men had 
sung of that ale were true or no. But hardly had 
the sailor put his tankard down when he cried out 
in a loud voice : 

" It is true, and I believe ! " 

Then he went on further : 

" Without any doubt whatsoever, this nectar was 
brewed in the waxing of the moon and of that barley 
which Brutus brought hither in the first founding of this 
land ! And the water wherein that barley-corn was 
brewed was May-day dew, the dew upon the grass before 
sunrise of a May-day morning. For it has all the seven 
qualities of ale, which are : — 

Aleph — Clarity. 

Beth — Savour. 

Gimel — A lively hue. 

D aleth — Lightness . 

He — Profundity. 

Vau — Strength retained, 
and lastly, Zayin, which is Perfection and The End." 

Our interest in inns and old ale is now becoming 



NEAR WORTHING 187 

academic. The people who now write in praise of 
beer are generally cultured folk who spend many 
hours in libraries dipping into old volumes on the 
chance of discovering some long-forgotten tippler 
who has hymned his beer in verse or acknow- 
ledged its transcendent qualities in prose. Rarely 
would such people delight in the jocund scenes 
pictured in Hogarth's engravings of " Beer 
Street " and " Gin Lane." Still less would they 
ever dream of becoming " fuddled." Modern 
business men are not willing to : 

"... look into the pewter pot, 
And see the world, as the world's not." 

One recalls Mr. Arthur Beckett's verses in praise 
of another famous Sussex inn — " The Star " at 
Alfriston : 

" I've drunk the ' Mermaid's ' beer at Rye, 
I've tasted swipes at Firle, 
And once for a lark, at Glynde, near by, 
I kissed the ' Dewdrop's ' girl ; 
In a dozen bars I've filled my skin, 
Toasting many a Sussex son, 
But of all the joys of the country inn, 
I've felt most at Alfriston. 

I've munched bren-cheese, and tossed off my quart 
In the pub at Pevensey Bay ; 



188 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

At a sirloin of beef I've done my part 

At the end of a rambling day ; 

I've shared in the stew of an artizan, 

Such cates are all on a par ; 

If you ask my ideal of a meal for a man 

I say ' Bacon and eggs at the Star ' ! " 

The translucent red glory of the Audit or old 
October Ale is now enjoyed in thought rather than 
in taste, for that poor creature, the Small Beer of 
the present day, is a weakly resemblance of the old 
stuff. In fact, most inns sell only abominable 
Swipes. Nevertheless, we still sing the good songs 
in praise of drinking, but our mood is perhaps a 
trifle more sentimental than ribald. We take a 
delight in the song of " Tipper," the Newhaven 
brewer, which is to be found in Mr. Arthur 
Beckett's Sussex poems : 

" Tom Tipper he lived in Newhaven town, 
And he made for himself a goodly renown ; 
Says he ' Men o' Sussex have never a peer, 
I'll show 'em I love 'em by brewing good beer ; 
At cider, at perry, at whiskey they'll sneer, 
When they drink a pot o' Tipper's strong beer.' 

And now old Tom Tipper lies under the sod, 
His body is ashes, his soul is with God ; 
While Sussex men live his mem'ry won't fail, 
They'll think o' Tom Tipper when they drink his 
good ale. 
At cider, at perry, we Sussex men sneer, 
So long as we drink old Tom Tipper's beer." 



NEAR WORTHING 189 

A goodly human and lovable fellow this Tipper, 
and his epitaph is well worth quoting here : 

" Reader, with kind regards this Grave survey. 
Nor heedless pass where Tipper's ashes lay : 
Honest he was, ingenius, blunt, and kind ; 
And dared to do what few dare do, speak his mind. 
Philosophy and History well he knew, 
Was versed in Physick and in Surgery too, 
The best old Stingo he both brewed and sold ; 
Nor did one knavish act to get to his Gold. 
He played through Life a varied comic part, 
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart — 
Reader, in real truth such was the man, 
Be better, wiser, laugh more if you can." 

It is with a pang of regret that we learn he 
shuffled off this mortal coil at the early age of 
fifty-four. 

What could be more inspiriting than Hilaire 
Belloc's song of ale with its sixteenth century 
flavour ? 

" If I was what I never can be, 

The master or the squire ; 
If you gave me the rape from here to the sea, 

Which is more than I desire ; 
Then all my crops should be barley and hops, 

And did my harvest fail, 
I'd sell every rod of my acres, I would, 

For a belly-full of good ale." 



190 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

Or A. E. Housman's eulogy of malten brew : 

" Oh, many a peer of England brews 
Livelier liquor than the muse, 
And malt does more than Milton can 
To justify God's ways to man. 
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink 
For fellow whom it hurts to think ; 
Look into the pewter pot 
To see the world as the world's not." 

You ask what all this has to do with Sussex. 
Well, it has almost everything. For the next time 
you pass through Washington, you will think of 
these Bacchic notes, visit the inn, and read 
Hilaire Belloc's story of Grizzlebeard in " The 
Four Men," and that will take you to the heart of 
Sussex. 

The excursion to Washington from Worthing 
will be a delight to all those who, like Richard 
Jefferies, hold that " there is always hope in the 
hills," for this is the straight road to the Downs. 
Gradually the pastoral nature of the scenery 
changes to what Kipling calls " the blunt, bow- 
headed, whale-backed downs," which form a 
unique background to the town, stretching inland 
for mile after mile, their pure, bracing air, fragrant 
in summer and autumn with the scent of wild 
thyme, their springy turf — a pleasure to walk on — 
broken in great patches by a blaze of golden gorse. 



NEAR WORTHING 191 

Here, if anywhere, one is in close and silent com- 
munion with Nature. 

One may take the motor-bus to the top of 
Washington Bostel from Worthing, and then take 
the path going east to the top of the Downs and 
on to Chanctonbury Ring. Near here is a fine 
dew-pond which we read of in " Weland's Sword " 
as being made by the Flint Men. Kipling sings : 

" We have no waters to delight 

Our broad and brookless vales — 
Only the dewpond on the height 
Unfed, that never fails." 

The carpet-like verdant turf of these hills makes 
walking a great pleasure, and when one wishes to 
rest what better couch than the " soft thymy 
cushions " of the Downs which Kipling tells us 
will " cure anything but broken necks or hearts " ? 
Concerning thyme I shall venture to borrow a 
passage from Mr. Hudson : 

" Among the bushes on the lower slopes one stumbles 
on places of extraordinary fertility, where the thistle, 
foxglove, ragwort, viper's bugloss, agrimony and wild 
mignonette grow to a man's breast ; while over them all 
the mullein lifts its great flowery rod to a height of six 
to nine feet. From these luxuriant patches you pass 
to more open ground covered with golden seeding grasses, 
and heather, fiery, purple-red, and emerald-green spots 



ig2 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

powdered white with woodruff, and great beds of purple 
thyme. One afternoon, tired with a long day's ramble 
in the burning sun, I cast myself down on one of these 
fragrant beds and almost fell asleep. That night when 
I threw off my clothes I noticed that the fragrance still 
clung to them, and when I woke next morning the air 
of the room was so charged with it that for a moment I 
fancied myself still out of doors resting on that purple 
flowery bed." 

Some lines written on the Ring by a soldier in 
Flanders reproduce in a very vivid manner how 
true is the saying that of all human affections the 
love of Earth is the deepest. Such love invades 
the heart when it is young, lodging itself in the 
most secret recesses of the memory : 

" I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the 

Ring 
In summer time, and on the Down how larks and linnets 

sing 
High in the sun. The wind comes off the sea, and, oh, 

the air ! 
I never knew till now that life in old days was so fair, 
But now I know it in this filthy rat-infested ditch, 
When every shell must kill or spare, and God alone 

knows which, 
And I am made a beast of prey, and this trench is my 

lair — 
My God ! I never knew till now that those days were 

so fair. 
And we assault in half-an-hour, and — it's a silly thing, 
I can't forget the lane that goes from Steyning to the 

Ring." 



NEAR WORTHING 193 

Cissbury Ring can be easily ascended from the 
village of Findon, which lies in a valley four miles 
north of Worthing. Take the track opposite the 
Gun Inn, mounting steadily until the grand oval 
of the Ring is seen above on the right. Here 
we find a single fosse, from eight to twelve feet in 
depth, and a broad and lofty vallum enclose an 
oval camp, about sixty acres in extent. Roman 
coins and pottery have been discovered here, and 
traces of the foundation of a praetorium ; so that 
it is probable the Roman legionaries kept watch 
and ward upon this solitary height long before 
Mlla. and his sea rovers hunted the Britons out of 
their woodland villages. 

Here we may visualise the life of the men of the 
Stone Age in the magic mirror of one of Rudyard 
Kipling's best stories, " The Knife and the Naked 
Chalk," for it was from some such point as this 
that Tyr went down to bring back from the Weald 
the knife which gave his people the greater pro- 
tection against the wolf. Here, too, Dan and Una 
make the acquaintance of Mr. Dudeney, an old 
shepherd, who perhaps was a descendant from 
a long line of shepherds bearing that name who 
are not without their records in this district. 
Particulars of the Southdown shepherds will be 
found in " Glimpses of our Sussex Ancestors," 

N 



i 9 4 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

by Charles Fleet (1882) — a book which may be 
found at the Worthing Library. It is curious 
that one member of this family of shepherds 
became a schoolmaster at Lewes after living as 
a shepherd to his twenty-third year. He took it 
into his head to keep a diary, and this is perhaps 
one of the best chronicles of the life of a shepherd 
we have at this date. His name was John 
Dudeney, and he was a native of Rottingdean. 
He was born in 1782. Space forbids quotation 
from his diary, and I must refer the reader to 
Fleet's book on the subject. 

Nobody has written with more insight about 
the Sussex Downs than Mr. W. H. Hudson, and I 
take this beautiful passage from his essay, " The 
Living Garment of the Downs " : 

" Here one may see the corn reaped with sickles in the 
ancient way ; and, better still, the wheat carried from 
the field in wains drawn by two or three couples of great, 
long-horned, black oxen. One wonders which of the 
three following common sights of the Sussex Downs 
carries us further back in time ; the cluster of cottages, 
with church and farm buildings that form the village 
nestling in the valley, and seen from above appearing as 
a mere red spot in the prospect ; the grey-clad shepherd, 
crook in hand, standing motionless on some vast green 
slope, his grey, rough-haired sheep-dog resting at his 
feet ; or the team of coal-black, long-horned oxen draw- 
ing the plough or carrying the corn. 



NEAR WORTHING 195 

" The little rustic village in the deep dene, with its 
two or three hundred inhabitants, will probably outlast 
London, or at all events London's greatness ; and the 
stolid shepherd with his dog at his feet will doubtless 
stand watching his flock on the hillside for some thousands 
of years to come ; but these great, slow, patient oxen 
cannot go on dragging the plough much longer ; the 
wonder is that they have continued to the present time. 
One gazes lovingly at them, and on leaving them casts 
many a longing, lingering look behind, fearing that after 
a little while their place will know them no more." 

But let us return to Washington. It was on 
Chancton Farm, close at hand, a remarkable find 
of Saxon coins was made in 1866. For some time 
Saxon pennies were cheap at Washington, and a 
number sufficient to fill a half-pint pewter pot are 
said to have changed hands for a quart of Sussex 
ale. As I have mentioned before, the ale at the 
Washington Inn — which by the way is the Franklin 
Arms, I presume — is according to Mr. Hilaire 
Belloc the world's best brew, so we must suppose 
that the rustic received good value for the pennies. 
It appears that for centuries a tradition had 
existed that " treasure " was secreted at Chancton 
Farm and the ghost of an old white-bearded man 
was said to guard it. Blackmore says in " Alice 
Lorraine " : 

" A well-known landmark now, and the scene of many 



196 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

a merry picnic, Chanctonbury Ring was then a lonely 
spot, imbued with terror of a wandering ghost — an 
ancient ghost with a long white beard, walking even in 
the afternoon, with its head bowed down, in search of 
something — a vain search of centuries. This long-sought 
treasure has now been found ; not by the ghost, however, 
but by a lucky stroke of the plough-share ; and the 
spectral owner roves no more. He is supposed with all 
the assumption required to make a certainty, to have 
been a tenant of Chancton Manor under Earl Gurth, the 
brother of Harold, and, being slain at Hastings, to have 
forgotten where his treasure lay." 

The motor-bus from Worthing turns off on the 
London Road past Washington for Storrington, 
another secluded South Down village. In the 
church here is an inlaid slab commemorative of 
Henricus Wilshe, a priest, 1591. 

That strange figure, Francis Thompson, was 
placed under the care of the monks at Storrington 
Priory. Here he renounced opium for some time 
and his brain cleared. One might almost say that 
Storrington was his spiritual birthplace, for his 
genius, welling up in an unbroken stream, passed 
into " The Ode of the Setting Sun," with its 
picture of the old monastery, " The Song of 
Hours," and the wonderful essay on Shelley, 
which was thrown back on his hands by the 
Dublin Review, and which was published in that 
journal after his death. In " Daisy " Storrington 



NEAR WORTHING 197 

comes into a poem of Wordsworthian simplicity 
and poignancy : 

" O, there were flowers in Storrington, 
On the turf and on the spray ; 
But the sweetest flower on Sussex Hills 
Was the Daisy-flower that day ! 

She went her unremembering way, 

She went and left in me 
The pang of all the partings gone, 

And partings yet to be." 

Thompson left Storrington in February, 1890, 
and in the next year he wrote his masterpiece, 
" The Hound of Heaven," which might well stand 
for an echo of the spiritual fret and uneasiness of 
the last twenty-five years. In this poem Thomp- 
son also epitomised his own life. Whilst some 
men were toiling and piling up earthly treasures 
of one kind or another, he cared nothing for such 
things, and it was evident that it was his wish to 
remain poor. But could any better symbol of the 
undercurrent of the bewildered modern mind be 
desired than the opening stanza : 

" I fled Him down the nights and down the days ; 
I fled Him down the arches of the years ; 
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways 
Of my own mind ; and in the midst of tears 



ig8 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

I hid from Him and under running laughter 

Up vistaed hopes, I sped ; 

And shot, precipitated 
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, 
From those strong Feet that followed, followed 
after." 

There we see in one flash the sorrow of man — 
the dreamer, drifting willy-nilly in search of that 
peace which is not of this world. In 1897 Thomp- 
son became a regular contributor to the Academy, 
which gave him as many books of theology, 
history, biography and poetry as he cared to 
review. The staff used to exclaim aloud when 
they read his proofs (on his splendid handling of a 
subject demanding the best literary knowledge 
and insight). He was " gentle in looks, half- wild 
in externals, his face worn by pain and the fierce 
reactions of laudanum, his hair and straggling 
beard neglected, he had yet a distinction and an 
aloofness of bearing that marked him in the 
crowd ; and when he opened his lips he spoke as 
a gentleman and a scholar." His coming brought 
new life into the office. His friend says : " Unem- 
bittered, he kept his sweetness and sanity, his 
dewy laughter, and his fluttering gratitude. . . . 
I think the secret of his strength was this : that 
he had cast up his accounts with God and man, 



NEAR WORTHING 199 

and thereafter stood in the mud of earth with a 
heart wrapped in such fire as touched Isaiah's 
lips." 

In 1907 he fell ill, and though he rallied more 
than once, he grew steadily worse. Mr. Meynell 
persuaded him to go to the Hospital of St. John and 
St. Elizabeth, where he died. He was buried at 
St. Mary's Cemetery, Kensal Green, with roses 
from George Meredith's garden in his coffin bearing 
the tribute, " A true poet, one of the small band." 

His death was accelerated by laudanum, but 
was directly due to tuberculosis. This noble 
mind, which soared as Shelley's soared, which was 
not capable of anything mean or common, has 
written his own epitaph in the lines to Cardinal 
Manning : 

" One stricken from his birth 
With curse 
Of destinate verse . . . 
He lives detached days ; 
He serveth not for praise ; 
For gold 
He is not sold ; 
Deaf is he to world's tongue j 
He scorneth for his song 
The loud 
Shouts of the crowd." 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS AND THEIR 
CHARACTERISTICS 



Chapter XII 

THE SUSSEX DOWNS AND THEIR 
CHARACTERISTICS 

My task in this chapter is to speak of the natural 
features of the Downs for which Sussex is famous. 
The range of the Downs commences at Petersfield 
in Hampshire, and extends to Beachy Head. 
Their length is between fifty and sixty miles, their 
greatest breadth seven miles, and their mean eleva- 
tion about 500 feet, rising in places to more than 
800 feet. Their northern escarpment is in general 
steep and abrupt, but on the south they usually 
descend by a gentle declivity, and unite almost 
imperceptibly with the lowlands of the coast. 

From Beachy Head to Brighton they present 
an immediate barrier to the sea, forming a bold 
and precipitous line to the coast, but at Brighton 
they take an inland direction, and occupy the 
centre of West Sussex. From this circumstance 
a considerable difference exists in the geological 
relations of the Eastern and Western divisions of 
the County of Sussex. 

The chalk hills of Sussex are separated into five 

203 



204 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

distinct masses, by the rivers Aran, Adur, Ouse 
and Cuckmere. 

Both prose writers and poets have hymned their 
praises of the great chalk hills of Sussex. Swin- 
burne has put the smooth-swelling downs in a 
beautiful picture in his " On the South Coast." 
This poem embraces Shoreham and Lancing. In 
his verses on Sussex Rudyard Kipling has given 
us something of the passion of a personal con- 
fession. Is not man's deepest love given to the 
earth ? Hardly a song of love or regret is without 
this acknowledgment. Are we not all haunted by 
certain landscapes which come back unbidden, not 
as common topographical facts, but as vestures of 
the soul ? To Kipling the Downs are a region 
untrod by man save by the favour of the Gods. 
The very soil is full of magic : 

" Deeper than our speech and thought ; 
Beyond our reason's sway, 
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought 
Yearns to its fellow-clay." 

Then we come to Meredith. In " Beauchamp's 
Career" Mr. Romfrey, from his window at Steyn- 
ham, saw Cecilia Halkett and Nevil Beauchamp 
ride off in the early dawn, when they made their 
strange visit to Bevisham : 

" To relieve an uncertainty in Cecilia's face that might 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 205 

soon have become confusion, he described the downs 
fronting the paleness of early dawn, and then their arch 
and curve and dip against the pearly grey of the half 
glow ; and then among their hollows, lo, the illumination 
of the East all around, and up and away, and a gallop 
for miles along the turfy, thymy rolling billows, land to 
left, sea to right, below you." 

The study of nature and humanity in the Downs 
has inspired much of the work of Mr. W. H. 
Hudson. The " fairy flora and the fairy fauna " 
of the chalk hills have never been so truly painted 
before. Listen to this excellently descriptive 
study of the carousing humble-bees : 

" Walking about on the downs in the fading light you 
will find the belated reveller half buried in the purple 
disc, clasping it affectionately to his bosom ; and, how- 
ever stupefied with nectar he may seem, you will observe 
that he still continues to thrust at the smaller tubular 
florets with his proboscis, although probably with a very 
uncertain aim. If you compassionately touch him with 
a finger-tip to remind him of the lateness of the hour, 
he will lurch over to one side and put out one or two of 
his anterior legs or arms to make a gesture waving you 
off. And if your ears were tuned to catch the small 
inaudible sounds of nature, you would doubtless hear him 
exclaiming with indistinct utterance, ' Go 'way ; for 
goo'ness sake don't 'sturb me ; lemme be — I'm a'right.' " 

" It is noticeable that even in his cups he never wholly 
loses the characteristic dignity of manner coupled with 
gentleness we so greatly admire in him. There may be in 



206 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

his order creatures equally intelligent ; but morally, or 
at all events in manner, he is decidedly their superior. 
So peaceable and mild in disposition is he, so regardful 
of the rights of others, even of the meanest, that he will 
actually give place to a fly coming to feed at the same 
flower. It is on this account that, alone among insects, 
the humble-bee is universally regarded with esteem and 
affection. In his virtues, and in all that is best in him, 
he is very human. It is therefore not strange, during 
a late walk, when we bid good-night and good-bye to the 
darkening downs, that it grieves us a little to find so 
estimable an insect in such a plight." 

Richard Jefferies in that perfect prose poem, 
" The Story of My Heart," tells of how the hills 
of Sussex held him, and pressed him and spoke to 
him. It was at Pevensey that he felt that strange 
emotion that impelled him to recapture and write 
down thoughts which had haunted him for many 
years. Oscar Wilde's comedy, " The Importance 
of Being Earnest," was written at Worthing, and 
one of the principal characters is named after the 
town. Mr. W. H. Hudson's " Nature in Down- 
land " will appeal to nature lovers, and the 
illuminating and suggestive story of " The Knife 
and the Naked Chalk " in Kipling's " Rewards and 
Fairies " deals with the " bare windy chalk 
downs." " Bygone Sussex," by E. A. Axon 
(published by William Andrews, 1897), deserves a 
wider publicity. " A History of Brickwall in 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 207 

Sussex," by A. L. Frewen ; " Picturesque Sussex," 
by Claude Jerrold (Valentine & Sons, Dundee) ; 
" The Beauties and Antiquities of Sussex," by 
Rouse, 1825 ; " Glimpses of Our Sussex An- 
cestors," by Charles Fleet (1882), and Arthur 
Beckett's two delightful books on Sussex are all 
on the shelves of the Worthing Public Library, 
where a large collection of books which deal 
particularly with Sussex can be seen. 

Salvington, less than three miles from Worthing, 
was the birthplace of John Selden (1584-1654), 
" the great dictator of learning to the English 
nation," and the intimate friend of Pym and 
Hampden. A black marble slab to his memory 
may be seen in the choir of the Temple Church, 
London. Selden's Cottage, with thatched roof, is 
very much visited by sightseers. Some of Selden's 
sayings are on our lips every day, the following for 
instance : 

" Old friends are best. King James used to call for 
his old shoes, they were easiest for his feet." 

Blackmore's " Alice Lorraine " (sub-titled " A 
Tale of the South Downs ") deals with Chancton- 
bury Ring, and Louis Jennings' " Rambles Among 
the Hills " is without rival in its own particular 
line. 



208 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

The neighbourhood of Worthing inspired several 
of W. E. Henley's lyrics : " Hawthorn and 
Lavender," is dated " Worthing, 1901," and his 
weird poem on the old boat at Shoreham has a 
peculiar value : 

" In Shoreham river, hurrying down 
To the live sea, 

By working, marrying, breeding Shoreham town, 
Breaking the sunset's wistful and solemn dream, 
An old, black rotter of a boat 
Past service. Labouring, tumbling note, 
Lay stranded in mid-stream. 

With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, 
That made me think of legs and a broken spine ; 
Soon, all too soon, 
Ungainly and forlorn to lie 
Full in the eye 

Of the cynical, discomfort able moon, 
That as I looked, stared from the fading sky, 
A clown's face floured for work. And by and by 
The wide-winged sunset waned and waned ; 
The lean night wind crept westward, chilling and 

sighing ; 
The poor old hulk remained, 
Stuck helpless in mid-ebb. And I knew why — 
Why, as I looked the good green earth seemed 

dying- 
Dying or dead : 

And, as I looked on the old boat, I said : 
' Dear God, it's I ! ' " 

In " Ovingdean Grange," Harrison Ainsworth 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 209 

has written on the subject of the " good people " 
of the Downs : 

" Mark yon little T-shaped cuttings on the slope 
below us ? Those are the snares set by the shepherds for 
the delicious wheat-ear, our English ortolan. The fairies 
still haunt this spot, and hold their midnight revels upon 
it, as yon dark rings testify. The common folk hereabouts 
term the good people ' Pharisees ' and style these emerald 
circles ' hagtracks.' Why, we care not to enquire. 
Enough for us the fairies are not altogether gone. A 
smooth soft carpet here is spread out for Oberon and 
Titania and their attendant elves, to dance upon by 
moonlight ; and there is no lack of mushrooms to form 
tables for Puck's banquet." 

Gilbert White, in his " Natural History of 
Selborne," refers to the sheep of the Downs : 

' To the west of the Adur River all such animals 
have horns, smooth white faces, and white legs, but east 
of that river all flocks were poll sheep, or hornless, more- 
over, they had black faces with a white tuft of wool on 
their foreheads, speckled and spotted legs, so that you 
might almost think that the flocks of Laban were pastur- 
ing on one side of the stream and the variegated breed of 
his son-in-law Jacob on the other." 

And then there are the flowers ; mostly on the 
Downs they are small. We find the creeping 
yellow rock-rose ; clovers, red and white ; wild 
thyme and birds-foot, trefoil — the last two are 

o 



210 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

always on the chalk hills — and little specks of red 
which are called musky stork's bill. Mr. Hudson 
points out that many of the flowers which grow 
in other parts of England in rich soil scarcely look 
like the same species growing in the close herbage 
of the Downs. Here they change their habits : 

" The luxury of long stems, the delight of waving in 
the wind, and the ambition to overtop their neighbours, 
would here be fatal. Their safety lies in nestling down 
amid the lowly grass, keeping so close to the earth as to 
be able to blossom and ripen their seed in spite of the ever 
nibbling sheep — the living lawn mowers perpetually 
mowing over them." 

The faint purple round leafed mint ; rest- 
harrow and woodruff e are to be found everywhere. 

Once on the Downs we escape from the intensity 
of life, and the " tinkling silence," as Rudyard 
Kipling calls it, lulls us into a gentle coma of satis- 
faction. The immense slumbrous sunshine enters 
the blood and ennobles the brain. We return like 
prodigals to the earth that bore us. There is 
silence and repose here, and deep in the very 
chalk beneath the feet we have that " thickish 
mutter " which Kipling mentions in the " Knife 
and the Naked Chalk." It is good to lay out on 
the naked chalk, for in our zeal to do many things 
we may forget sometimes the importance of doing 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 211 

nothing. And as Mr. Dudeney,the South Down 
shepherd said, " the closer you lie to the turf the 
more you're apt to see things." Besides the mind 
sometimes is better for being spread and bleached. 
It wants the simplest experience and simplest 
delights. Hear Richard Jefferies : 

" There, alone, I went down to the sea. I stood 
where the foam came to my feet, and looked out over 
the sunlit waters. The great earth bearing the richness 
of the harvest, and its hills golden with corn, was at my 
back ; its strength and firmness under me. The great 
sun shone above, the wide sea was before me, the wind 
came sweet and strong from the waves ... I rubbed 
out some of the wheat in my hands, I took up a piece 
of clod and crumbled it in my fingers — it was a joy to 
touch it — I held my hand so that I could see the sun- 
light gleam on the slightly soft surface of the skin. The 
earth and sun were like my flesh and blood, and the air 
of the sea life." 

The literary pilgrim will not fail to seek the 
grave of Jefferies at Broadwater. He died at 
Goring, hard by, in 1887. " If I had my own way 
after death," wrote Jefferies in " The Story of my 
Heart," " I would be burned on a pyre of pine- 
wood, open to the air, and placed on the summit 
of the hills. Then let my ashes be scattered 
abroad — not collected in an urn — freely sown wide 
and broadcast." 



212 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

Some parts of the Downs are arable, but in 
general they are reserved for pasturage, and 
support a breed of sheep superior to any in the 
kingdom. As there are no natural springs on the 
chalk hills, the flocks are supplied with water 
from large but shallow circular ponds, the bottoms 
of which are covered with a layer of ochraceous 
clay, to prevent the water percolating through the 
chalk ; they are seldom known to fail, even in the 
hottest summers. White in his " Natural History 
of Selborne," has described these ponds in very 
graphic language. A book with a formidable title 
but most interesting subject matter is Messrs. 
A. J. & G. Hubbard's " Neolithic Dew-ponds and 
Cattleways." Every one who has ascended, or 
hopes to ascend, Cissbury and Chanctonbury 
Rings should make a point of reading this inform- 
ing volume. 

Sheep are the dominating animal of the Downs. 
The ancient imprints of the flocks is deeply 
stamped on every hill, and the tangled sheep tracks 
give a character to the landscape which is quite 
unique. The sheep in passing along the steepest 
concave hillsides have moulded the chalk into 
innumerable parallel lines. These terraced sheep 
paths give the appearance of tiers of seats in some 
great amphitheatre. Since the days when the 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 213 

" Grey Shepherd," as Kipling calls the wolf, leapt 
into the sheep folds of the Flint men, these trampled 
paths have been slowly forming. Sheep have 
always followed in each other's footsteps and have 
grazed neither up nor down the steep slopes, but 
straight ahead on one level. Thus the narrow 
terraces. The rhythm of the Downs is inevitable. 
Swinburne has put them in a breathless line : 

" Downs that swerve and aspire in curve and change 
of heights that the dawn holds dear." 

Even the sheep have added to the great rhythm 
of the Downs. In their quiet unquestioning sub- 
mission they have trodden out a colossal rhythm 
of their own, and stamped the bare slopes with 
vast mysterious striation that must lift the way- 
farer who beholds them up from the carking cares 
of work-a-day life. Words seem useless to express 
the peace of these uplifted spaces. They sink into 
the mind, plough up the soul, and sow their seeds, 
which like the wizard's plant of the East, spring 
up at once and blossom into worship, reverence, 
awe. 

E. Hallam Moorhouse, in the Ditchling 
" Beacon," writes of the Downs with such sureness 
and sympathy that I cannot refrain from giving 



214 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

some eloquent lines on the Flint men from the 
poem : 

" From the wattle folds on the hill slope 
Come the wavering maternal notes of the sheep, 
Anxious and troubled over the ways of their new- 
dropped lambs. 
Beyond all are the hills bare and strange in the evening 

light, 
Furrowed with ridges dug by the Flint Men : 
Hills that have altered little since the Flint Men 
Made their great ditches and drank from their dew- 
ponds. 
A plough left in its furrow catches a gleam from the sky 
And speaks of man's toil for bread to the lonely slopes 

above 
Where the blasted Witch tree shows against the sky line 
His fear of the lurking evil that dried his cows and spoilt 

his butter — 
A fear that in vaster forms haunted Stonehenge. 
And is not utterly gone from the comfortable farm- 
house fireside. 

So do the Flint Men touch with the villagers they 
knew not, 

And the Past loom over the Present. 

So do the human lives gathered in the hollow of the 
village 

Shelter from unknown things under its clustered roofs — 

Roofs and walls, which humble as they are, have out- 
lasted generations, 

Have seen birth and death, joy and grief, and older 
wars," 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 215 

Having spoken of the sheep and the shepherd, I 
must refer the reader to Kipling's " Knife and the 
Naked Chalk," for the third member of the 
triumvirate, the Dog. Mr. Dudeney's dog, Old 
Jim, can be seen every day on the Downs. If 
one inquires the breed of the dog of a South Down 
man one gets the answer, "Just a ship-dog, 
surely e." But this description is far too in- 
discriminate ; it is often applied to the malapert 
animal which yelps noisily in the streets, chases 
cats, and goes mad at the sound of a motor car. 
Far different is the " ship-dog." He is always 
ready for real work, and whether employed in 
driving on the roads, or herding on the Downs, his 
grave and earnest aspect evinces his full conscious- 
ness that he is playing an important part in the 
day's toil. When on duty he will evade any 
overtures of friendliness by a stranger, not in a 
snarling and surly manner, but with a certain calm 
indifference. At an early date he becomes as 
sedate as a Quaker, and learns the rules of the game. 
Should his master be absent for a time he will 
" carry on " and nurse the flock, never over-pacing 
them or suffering any to stray away ; and in the 
hustle of the market town or fair a good sheep dog 
never allows such distractions as a brass band or 
musical horses to lure him from his duties. When 



2i6 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

the sheep dog rounds up a captive and jumps with 
much show of fierceness at its neck the stranger is 
led to think that the poor animal is terrified and in 
danger. Nothing of the sort. Old Jim's manner 
is much sharper than his teeth, and I have often 
seen younger members of the flock stamping with 
their feet, and otherwise inviting him to a contest. 
Our Southdown animal friend is a fellow of great 
virtue and intelligence, and as the South Country 
shepherd remarks, " he's as cute as a Christian." 

I have said but little about the dew-ponds, or 
to give them an alternative and better name, 
mist-ponds. We are told that these never fail, 
in the dry summer months, though as many as 
five hundred sheep drink from one pond each day. 
It is curious to note that sheep, if left to choose 
for themselves, prefer pond water to that of cold 
springs and running streams. In Sussex there 
are men who style themselves pond-makers, and 
it has been asserted that a travelling band of them 
exists. But this is rather doubtful, for the simple 
reason that mist-ponds (called in the local shib- 
boleth ship-ponds) are quite easy to construct. 
There is little mystery about them. Any Sussex 
son of the soil, such as Hobden in Kipling's verses 
" The Land " (" A Diversity of Creatures ") can 
construct one. It is a matter of scooping out the 



THE SUSSEX DOWNS 217 

earth to the depth of a few feet, leaving generally 
a hollow of chalky rubble. Then the floor is 
puddled with clay, and left to dry. Sometimes a 
few flints are placed on the clay and stamped in. 
These ponds should be made in the spring when 
the weather is mild, as frost will crack and ruin 
them. The upheaval made by worms is fatal to 
them, too. Animals should not be allowed to 
tread in a freshly constructed pond ; the clay 
being soft is easily perforated. If the floor is left 
to dry and not touched, water will come, rain or 
dry. I notice that many of them are now con- 
structed with plain cement, and others are made 
by working a layer of chalk and hot lime on a 
well beaten-in chalk foundation. That fog and 
rain are the prime agents in the filling of sheep 
ponds is certain. Mr. Walter Johnson in his 
essay on " Ancient Ponds," puts forward the 
following theories : 

" When we come to ask why such a large amount of 
moisture should be concentrated on the small area of the 
mist pond there is a hot dispute. Some writers airily 
dismiss the problem as very simple, though their own 
explanations are by no means of that nature. Others 
assume the action of electricity, others again invoke the 
aid of the dust particles floating in the atmosphere. 
The question has been discussed at a meeting of the 
British Association, though even there unanimity was 



218 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

absent. Amid the babel of voices a general principle 
or two may be heard which may give the clue. The 
upper surface of the water in the pond is cooled by 
radiation, and convection currents are thus set up. In 
other words, the colder layers of the surface descend, 
and the warmer water from below rises to the top. This 
goes on until the contents of the pond are colder than 
the surrounding rocks and soil, when condensation of the 
aqueous vapour, whencesoever arising, goes on at a rapid 
rate." 

In some dew-ponds it will be observed that a 
tree or bush is planted on the south-west side. 
This helps the supply, for the drippings from the 
leaves fall to the pond. 

Straw forms part of the ground work of other 
ponds. It is placed between layers of mixed lime 
and clay and broken chalk ; or between layers of 
cement. Straw is used to act as a non-conducting 
agent, for it isolates the clay from the heat 
generated by the earth. The greatest care must 
be used to brick up the margins of straw dew- 
ponds, for the water must not get at the straw. 
That is ruinous, for wet straw ceases to draw the 
mist. 

The Sussex rustic is a slow person, though there 
is no reason to suppose that he is slower than any 
other rustic ; indeed, one is inclined to think that 
the proverbial slowness of all rustics covers a 



SUSSEX DOWNS 219 

deep, if only half-realised, philosophy. However, 
that may be. But no one has drawn a better 
picture of him than Rudyard Kipling and Hobden. 
One of his rustic characters is a wonderful portrait. 
I have met many farm-hands of this stamp. I 
have mentioned elsewhere that the true crest of 
the Sussex Men is the " Squatting pig," with the 
motto, " I wunt be druv," and this would certainly 
be in accordance with the methods of Hobden. 
Kipling's character veils his independent and 
stubborn spirit under a show of submission and 
humility, putting his hand to his hat at every few 
words and saying, " Just as you do please, sir," 
but giving so many and so incontrovertible reasons 
why it should not be so, that all give in to him and 
he remains absolute. Just such a man as Hobden 
is old Colepepper, and he is no phantom. I made 
a call upon him a few weeks ago. He was trim- 
ming a hedge with those great hedging-gloves on 
his hands. Every time I look at those gloves, so 
dear to the heart of this Sussex son of the soil, I 
am reminded of some mediaeval fighting-man's 
gauntlets, and Colepepper, with his smock-frock 
and rude gloves, has little changed, perhaps, since 
mediaeval days, 

Colepepper is " hedger and ditcher " in a certain 
corner of Sussex where one still hears so many 



220 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

echoes of a vanished world and of other cen- 
turies, and his years and humour have raised him 
to the position of an absolute autocrat in his own 
department. He has many stories of bygone 
days, and it is a pleasure to hear the antiquated 
words and phrases he employs in the telling of 
them. Many a word which when found in 
Shakespeare is rudely classed by annotators as 
" obsolete " are common in the cottage homes 
of Sussex. 

My friend does not appear to be cutting and 
laying the hedge in the usual way, but, with a 
long-handled hack-hook, he chops off the loose 
and untidy branches. This, he tells me, is called 
pleaching, an operation evidently well known to 
Shakespeare, and we recall such lines as : 

" Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, 
Unpruned dies ; her hedges even pleached, 
Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, 
Put forth disordered twigs." 

(Henry V., Act V., sc. 2.) 

" I reckon you are giving work a miss this 
grand morning and having a miche round," is one 
of his first observations. This recalls a well- 
known passage of Shakespeare when Prince Hal 
turning to Falstaff asks, " Shall the blessed sun of 



SUSSEX DOWNS 221 

heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries ? " 
Mouching, a form of the same word, is used for 
playing truant from school ; while blackberries, 
known too often to the schoolmaster as the incen- 
tive to mouching, are mouchers too. 

One of Colepepper's stories is of two Sussex 
broom-squires who, meeting at Heffle Cuckoo 
Fair, exchanged confidences over a tankard or so 
of ale : 

" Bob, I'm honest-innocent of how you can sell 
your brooms so cheap like. I steals the ling, I 
steals the butts, and I steals the binders ; but I 
can't sell 'em as cheap as you. What's your 
say ? " 

" Surely," said the other broom-squire with 
pride, " you see I steals 'em ready-made." 

And here is another anecdote. Old Colepepper 
offered to provide a tramp with ale and dinner if 
he would in return help him to dig up a plot of 
land. " The tramp had seen better days, you 
mind," said he, to give a point to the story, " but 
when I did ask 'im, he said right sharp, ' Dig ? 
God A'mighty ought to have invented something 
between a tramp and a horse to do digging ! '" 

I doubt if the village of Felpham will have any 
literary associations for the reader, yet William 
Hayley spent his later years here. He was a 



222 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

literary lion in his day, but he outlived his 
popularity, and it must be said to his credit that 
he preserved a sunny disposition, neither crabbed 
nor disheartened over his fall from popularity. 
He lived at Turret House near the church from 
1800 till his death in 1820. I dare say it will only 
excite a smile of disdain in readers of literary taste 
when I confess that Hayley's memory is dear to 
me. Last time I was at Felpham I watched the 
swallows returning to the turret of Hayley's old 
house at day's decline with all their marvellous 
hubbub and serial evolutions, and I thought of the 
last pensive lines he wrote : 

" Ye gentle birds that perch aloof, 
And smooth your pinions on my roof, 
Preparing for departure hence 
Ere winter's angry threats commence ; 
Like you, my soul would smooth her plume 
For longer nights beyond the tomb. 

May God, by whom is seen and heard 
Departing man and wandering bird, 
In mercy mark us for His own, 
And guide us to the land unknown." 

At Felpham, also, is a cottage that was the 
abode in 1800 of another of the " accursed race of 
poets," William Blake, who was also a visionary 
and artist. One of the most amazing revelations 



SUSSEX DOWNS 223 

of Blake's visionary powers consisted in the heads 
or spiritual portraits which he drew at Varley's 
house. Varley, who was one of the founders of 
the new school of water-colour drawing, was also 
an astrologer, who gained popular applause by 
making astonishing predictions. It was Varley 
who encouraged Blake to make his remarkable 
black and white spirit drawings. Varley would 
ask for a drawing of David, or Moses, or Julius 
Caesar, and Blake would take up his pencil, if the 
mood were on him, and begin to draw, looking up 
now and then as though to scrutinise an actual 
sitter. Whether these spiritual portraits were the 
outcome of an unbalanced mind or not, some of 
them were historically exact, and it is certain that 
Blake was no mountebank. 

The ghost of a flea, drawn in this way, has 
often made the profane laugh, and there may be 
room for laughter ; but, after all, more doubtful 
forms of supernormal phenomena are accepted 
gladly enough at the present time. However, we 
are inclined to view Blake from Max Nordau's 
standpoint, that all men of genius are mad, and 
at the same time agree with Oscar Wilde's parry 
that all sane people are idiots. 



THE SEAL'S ISLAND 



Chapter XIII 

THE SEAL'S ISLAND 

Selsey (the Seal's Island) is the name of the 
peninsula directly south of Chichester, and 
stretching to Selsey Bill, the most southerly point 
in the county. The peninsula forms the hundred 
of Manhood (Mainwood) which name brings to 
mind Kipling's poem, " Eddi's Service." Among 
all the poets of the last few years it would be 
difficult to find verses so utterly naked of any 
decoration, and yet so pleasing. The poem tells 
how a Saxon priest, Eddi, held a Christmas mid- 
night service in his chapel, but as the night was 
tempestuous and the flock was occupied with the 
Yule-tide festivities, not a soul entered the church 
at Manhood End. Eddi lit the altar candles and 
proceeded with his " Father's business," singing 
the Mass, and preaching the good word to a 
congregation consisting of a marsh donkey, and a 
yoke-weary bullock, who wandered in, attracted 
by the light at the open door. When the Saxon 

people made game of the holy man for his softness 

227 



228 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

and sensitiveness, he replied that " I dare not 
close His chapel on such as care to attend/' 
Kipling's writings, like his character, are a mixture 
of the grotesque and the sublime. The historical 
interest of Selsey is great. Here Wilfred, as first 
Bishop, founded his monastery and cathedral, and 
for nearly four centuries there were bishops of 
Selsey, until, after the Norman Conquest, the See 
was transferred to Chichester. Both the buildings 
now lie beneath the sea, which is still perpetually 
encroaching on the land. Thus an extensive 
deer park in Henry VIII.'s time is now a line of 
anchorage still called " The Park." The old 
church stands about two miles inland. In 1865 
it was pulled down, all except the chancel, which 
remains in a lonely graveyard. The church was 
built, it is supposed, by Bishop Rede of Chi- 
chester, about 1369-1385. Here are several grave- 
stones of Sussex marble, inscribed with a cross, 
memorials probably of the old Saxon priests, 
removed from the ruins of the ancient cathedral. 
Effigies of a man and woman, with figures of St. 
George and St. Agatha, their patron saints, com- 
memorate John Lews, and Agatha, his wife 
(d. 1537) . A gravestone in the churchyard to the 
memory of two young men drowned while render- 
ing assistance to a wrecked vessel, bears an epitaph 



THE SEAL'S ISLAND 229 

by Hayley. Readers should not forget Kipling's 
story, " The Conversion of St. Wilfrid," in which 
the author humorously describes how Puck 
wickedly persuaded Wilfrid to narrate the story 
of his fight with the Saxons on the Sussex coast — 
a story which the man of peace had endeavoured 
to put behind him. But when the fire of his youth 
revived for a few moments a sudden thick burr 
came into the old man's voice : "I was bringing 
over a few things for my old church at York, and 
some of the natives laid hands on them, and — 
and I'm afraid I lost my temper . . . Eh, but I 
must ha' been a silly lad." In such human 
touches these stories abound, and they make no 
little of Kipling's charm. 

" The Conversion of St. Wilfrid " is a sketch of 
a well-known phase in the life of the Archbishop 
Wilfrid. In the seventh century the kingdom of 
the South Saxons was to a great extent cut off 
from neighbouring English kingdoms by the tract 
of marshy land to the east and west, and even to 
the north, by the forest of the Weald. The sloping 
beaches of the coast also attracted sea adven- 
turers, who harassed and plundered their people, 
so it was natural that Paganism should have been 
retained longer in Sussex than in other kingdoms. 
These people, in whose veins flowed the restless 



230 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

blood of the Vikings, looked upon any unlucky 
ship driven ashore on their coast as theirs by 
right, and when Wilfrid's ship was driven ashore 
while he was sailing home from France, the South 
Saxons swooped down to loot any gear that might 
be cast up by the sea. One of the Saxons skilled 
in magic began to practise his black art on Wilfrid 
and his ship with a view to hasten their destruc- 
tion, but a well-flung stone from one of the Arch- 
bishop's crew killed him. Maddened by the sight 
of their leader's death they plunged into the surf 
and engaged Wilfrid's men, who gradually re- 
treated to the ship. The tide rising before its 
accustomed time floated the ship and thus enabled 
Wilfrid and his retainers to make off. It was 
twenty years later that Wilfrid returned to the 
South Saxons as a missionary during a period of 
famine. Rain had not fallen for three years, but 
Wilfrid taught the people to fish with an angle- 
hook and thus relieve much distress. In return 
for this many of the people offered to keep faith 
with the Christian God. During the day on which 
the Saxons were baptized into the Church the rain 
fell in a deluge, and the great famine came to an 
end. It is said that St. Wilfrid founded a 
monastery at Selsey, on a part of the land now 
claimed by the sea. Kipling tells us how Wilfrid 



THE SEAL'S ISLAND 231 

made friends with a pagan chief, Meon, in these 
parts, and introduces Eddius, the Kentish choir- 
master (and later, biographer) of Wilfrid, and 
also an old seal of high intelligence. Eddi 
abhorred Padda (the seal), but was converted to a 
great respect for it, after the animal had rescued 
Meon, Wilfrid and himself from the sea. Wilfrid 
tells quaintly in one part of the story how Eddi 
made a little cross in holy water on the wet muzzle 
of the seal, and was rewarded by the caresses of 
the faithful Padda — another little human touch 
that endears the old Kentish chaplain to us all. 

Wilfrid taught Meon much, and in turn the 
Archbishop learnt from the pagan chief to face 
the world in a broad-shouldered, warm, and deep- 
hearted way. 



SONG 0' THE SUSSEX MEN 



SONG 0' THE SUSSEX MEN 
By Arthur Beckett 
(dedicated to " the men of sussex society.") 

For the benefit of those unfortunate folk who are not 
natives of Sussex it is perhaps necessary to give some 
explanation of the references in the following song. Thus, 
the first three stanzas refer to legends connected with 
three Sussex saints. Dudeney (pronounced " Dude-ney ") 
was a self-taught Downland shepherd who ultimately 
became a schoolmaster in the county town. Thomas 
Paine, the famous freethinker and champion of the 
" rights of man," lived in Lewes, suffered contumely, and 
died abroad. Tipper was the inventor of the noted beer 
bearing his name ; Shelley and Cobden were two of 
Sussex's greatest sons — the former one of the greatest 
poets of this country, and the latter the repealer of the 
Corn Laws. 

As for dialectal words in the song, it may be explained 
that " furriner " is a term applied to all persons who come 
from any county but Sussex. " Chouse " is one cant 
term for another, i.e., " silly fool." " Sartin " equals 
" certain " ; " ship " is " sheep " ; " the hill " is " the 
downs " ; " e'en-a'most " is Sussex for " almost " used 
in some connections ; " dunnamany " stands f or " I don't 

?35 



236 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

know how many " ; and " bruff " for blunt of speech. 
Remaining Sussex words will be as plain to the 
" foreigner " as to the native himself. 

" Saint Wilfred sailed to Sussex, an' he come to Selsey 
Bill, 
An' 'there he built a liddle church upon a liddle hill ; 
He taught the starving Pagans how to net fish from 

the sea, 
An' then he them convarted to Christianitee. 



Chorus : 

Oh, Wilfred was a Sussex man, a Sussex man was 

he, 
He might ha' bin a furriner, but no such chouse was 

he, 
Says he, " I'll be a Sussex man, no better men there 

be!" 
So sing Hurrah, for Sussex men and Sussex by the 

sea ! 

Saint Cuthman come to Stenning, an' there he built 

a church, 
Says he, " The wicked Devil would leave these poor 

men in the lurch, 
But by God's blessing Stenning men through me shall 

come to grace," 
So he ups an' builds a mighty church in that there 
very pleace. 

Chorus — Oh, Cuthman was a Sussex man, etc. 



SONG 0' THE SUSSEX MEN 237 

Saint Dunstan was a blacksmith who lived out Mayfield 

way, 
He pulled the poor old Devil's nose, an' made un run 

away ; 
With his hot tongs he seized his nose ; Nick flew to 

Tunbridge Wells, 
An' cooled his nose in Tunbridge spring ; that's why 

that water — smells ! 

Chorus — Oh, Dunstan was a Sussex man, etc. 

John Dudeney was a shepherd tending ship upon the 

' Hill,' 
He also was a lamed man, wid books his mind he'd fill ; 
To Lewes town he brought renown, as much as he was 

able ; 
It is the truth I'm telling, though my fax till now was 

fable. 
Chorus — Oh, Dudeney was a Sussex man, etc. 

Tom Paine, too, was a Sussex man, an' fur a sartin 

season, 
He lived in Lewes, where he thought upon ' The Age o' 

Reason ' ; 
Tom didn't like religion ; says he, ' I must think free, 
So as England doesn't want me, I'll sail acrost the sea.' 

Chorus — Oh, Paine he was a Sussex man, etc. 

Tom Tipper was a Sussex man ; Newhaven give un 

birth, 
Tom Tipper brewed the strongest beer e'en-a'most upon 

this earth ; 
I know 'tis true — I've drunk it, too — a quart is worth 

a pound, 



238 KIPLING'S SUSSEX 

If you drink that much o' Tipper beer you'll see the 
world go round ! 

Chorus — Oh, Tipper was a Sussex man, etc. 

When Shelley thought that he'd be born, he says, ' I'll 

bring renown 
To Sussex first, an' England next,' so he chose Horsham 

town ; 
An' if you go down Horsham way you very soon will 

know it, 
' We doant read Shelley,' Horsham says, ' but still he 

is our poet ! " 

Chorus — Oh, Shelley was a Sussex man, etc. 

Dick Cobden went from Heyshott to the pleace called 

Parly ment, 
An' there he lived from year to year, an' middlin' time 

he spent 
A-taking taxes off the corn fur to help old England's 

poor ; 
Now, boys, just raise your voices, an' join me in a 

roar : 

Chorus — Oh, Cobden was a Sussex man, etc. 

The Devil come to Sussex dunnamany year ago, 

He run up an' down the county — here an' there an 

to-an'-thro, 
He saw the land was sweet an' fair, an' fine in every 

way, 
Says he, ' I'll settle here fur life.' — You'll find un there 

to-day ! 

Chorus — Oh, the Devil was a Sussex man, etc. 



SONG 0' THE SUSSEX MEN 239 

Now doant you wish that you was born in Sussex by 

the sea, 
Where every man's a famous man, as famous as can 

be?— 
But take good comfort from the thought that 'neath 

the wide blue sky, 
You cannot choose a better pleace than in Sussex fur 

to die ! 

Chorus : 

For it's good to live in Sussex, the land o' brave and 

free, 
Where men are bruff and honest — such men as you 

an' me ; 
If you weren't born in Sussex, whoever you may be, 
Then come an' die in Sussex, sweet Sussex by the 

Sea ! " 



[This song, which was sung at the annual dinner of the Men of Sussex 
Society, has been set to music by Mr. J. R. Dear, Mus. Bac, 
Master of the Music at the Pevensey Pageant.] 



APPENDIX. 



Q 



APPENDIX. 



SUSSEX PROVINCIALISMS 
Adone ----- Have done ; Leave offj 

" I am told on good authority that when a Sussex damsel 
says, ' Oh ! do adone,' she means you to go on ; but when 
she says, ' Adone-do,' you must leave off immediately." 



Apse 



Aspen-tree. 



Beazle - 


- To bother ; to tease. 


Bee Jam 


- Honey. 


Bettermost - 


- Superior. 


Bine 


- The Hop-stalk. 


Bleat - 


- Cold asa" Bleat wind." 


Bosky - 


- Tipsy. 


Coager - - - 


- (Cold Cheer) A meal of 
cold victuals taken at 



noon. 

Concerned in liquor - - Tipsy. 

" The man wasn't drunk — only a little concerned in 
liquor, like — and his back was a mask where he'd slipped in 
the muck coming along." — Kipling's " Friendly Brook." 

Dentical --•_•- Dainty. 

" My Master says that this here Prooshian (query Persian) 
cat what you gave me is a deal too dentical for a poor man's 
cat ; he wants one as will catch the meece and keep herself." 

243 



244 APPENDIX 

Dorman - Window in roof. 

Draggle-tail - A slut. 

Dunnamany - I don't know how many. 

" There was a dunnamany people come to see that gurt 
hog of mine when she was took bad, and they all guv it in 
as she was took with the information. We did all as ever 
we could for her. There was a bottle of stuff what I had 
from the doctor, time my leg was so bad, and we took and 
mixed it in with some milk and give it her lew warm, but 
naun as we could give her didn't seem to do her any good." 

Ellet The Elder Tree. 

Ellinge Lonely. 

Fenege To cancel ; to break an 

engagement. 

The reader cannot fail to remark that this word resembles 
a curious word used by Shakespeare — renege. It occurs in 
the well-known passage in " King Lear" : 

" Renege, affirm, and turn their halycon beaks 
With ever gale and vary of their masters." 

We are told that renege means to deny, but there would 
be little difficulty in making the word mean exactly what 
fenege expresses with the Sussex countryman. 

Flit - - - - - To skim milk (from Dan- 
ish, Flytter, to re- 
move). 

Flap-jack - Turnover apple-pie. 

Fob To froth as beer. 

Foreigner - - - - A stranger from some 

other part of England. 

" I have often heard it said of a woman in this village, 
who comes from Lincolnshire, that ' she has got such a good 
notion of work that you'd never find out but what she was 
an Englishwoman, without you was to hear her talk.' " 



APPENDIX 



245 



Gansing-gay - 

Good heart - 

" A garden in good heart." 

Gotch - 

Hack-hook - 



Hem-a-bit 
Hob-lamb 
Hog-pound - 
Huckle-my-buff 

Hugger-mugger 

Hurly-bulloo 
Lamentable - 



Cheerful. 
Good condition. 

- A large stone jug. 

- Hook for trimming 

hedges. 

- Not a bit. 

- A pet lamb. 

- Pig-stye. 

- Beer, eggs and brandy 

mixed. 

- In a slovenly and mud- 

dled manner. 

- A noisy disturbance. 

- Very. 



" I be lamentable worried about my boy." 

Leetle ----- Little, very little. 

" I never see one of these here gurt men there's s'much 
talk about in the peapers, only once, and that was up at 
Smime Show adunnamany years agoo. Prime Minister, 
they told me he was, up at Lunnon ; a leetle, lear, miserable, 
skinny-looking chap as ever I see [Disraeli, I imagine]. 
' Why,' I says, ' we doan't count our minister to be much, 
but he's a deal primer-looking than what yourn be.' " 



Long-dog - 

Nestle about the house - 



Greyhound. 

To work in and about the 
house. 



246' 



APPENDIX 



Old Lawrence - - - A kind of maginary saint 

or fairy, whose influ- 
ence produces indo- 
lence. 

' I cannot get up, for Lawrence ha'e completely got holt 
on me." 

Out-gate - Uncanny or unusual. 

Quiddy ? - - - - Que dis tu ? — What do 

you say ? 

Rath ----- Early ripe, soon. 

" The July friend is a rath ripe apple." 

Runagate - A ne'er-do-well. 

Rape ----- The division of a county. 

Sussex is divided into six rapes, each of which has its 
river, forest, and castle — Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes, 
Bramber, Arundel, and Chichester. Rape in Doomsday 
Book is used for a district under military jurisdiction. The 
Saxon Rap signifies not only a rope, but also a measure of 
land. Lower in his " History of Sussex " has written : 

" The word Rape seems to be peculiar to Sussex, unless 
it may be considered identical with the Hvepp of Iceland. 
That interesting island was divided into four quarters, 
each of which was partitioned into prefectures or sheriff- 
doms, and these again were subdivided into small districts 
called hrepps, consisting of families who lived contiguous 
to each other. Generally they were of the size of the 
present Icelandic parishes, and over each of these was 
appointed a hreppstiori or bailiff, who had the immediate 
inspection of his own bailliwick. From this it would 
appear that the Icelandic hvepp was a much less important 
territory than the Sussex Rape. The etymology of the 
word is uncertain ; but it seems to be connected with the 
Welsh rhaff, the Anglo-Saxon rap, reap, the Danish veep, 
reeb, and the Gothic raip, signifying a rope. It was a 
practice amongst the Teutonic tribes to set out allotments 
by means of a cord or rope, just as a modern land-surveyor 
emnlnvs his Gunter's chain, and in Iceland the measure of 
land is suil by the rope." 



APPENDIX 247 

Still Sow - A cunning and selfish 

man. 

" The still sow eats the wash or ' draff.' " 

" We do not act, that often jest and laugh ; 
'Tis old but true, ' Still swine eat all the draugh.' " 

Tipler ----- Ale-house keeper. 

Top of the house - To be " top of the house" 

is to be out of temper. 

Trim-tram Gate - - - The church lich-gate. 

Tram means train or 
cortege. 

Valiant- - From vaillant (French), 

stout ; well built. 

See Kipling's " Dymchurch Flit " : " She was a fine, 
valiant woman, the Widow Whitgift." 

Weather-tender - Wise. 

Kipling's Widow Whitgift, who could tell " where lost 
things might be found, an' what to put about a crooked 
baby's neck, an' how to join parted sweethearts," would 
be called weather-tender. 



INDEX. 



Ainsworth, Harrison, 208. 

Ale, the seven qualities of, 1 86. 

Alfriston, 145. • 

" Alice Lorraine," Blackmore's, 
207. 

Ancient ponds, 217. 

" Aurettes and Lees" (Smug- 
glers), 158. 

Appledore, 82. 

A venel. Rector (Buxted), 173. 

Axon, E. A., 206. 



B 

" Baliff o' the Marshes," 66. 
'• Batemans," 34. 
Beckett, Mr. Arthur, 187, 207. 
Bell Inn, Burwash, 30. 
Belloc Hilaire, 10, 88. 
Belloc's " Washington Inn," 

185, 186. 
" Below the Mill Dam," 38. 
Blake, William, 222. 
Borde, Andrew, 117. 
Brickwall, 53. 
Broadwater, 211. 
Brookland, 82. 
" Brookland Road," 82. 
Browning, Elizabeth, 22. 
Bulverhythe, 107. 
Burwash, 21 et seq., 160. 
Burwash Weald, 35. 
Buxted, 173. 
" Bygone Sussex " (E. A. 

Axon), 206. 



Cade, Jack, 39. 

Chancton Farm (Washington), 

195. 
Chanctonbury Ring, 191, 207. 
Chichester (Old Song), 65. 
Colepepper Family, 121, 219. 
Collinses (Sussex Iron Masters), 

33. 39- 
Convent House (Wartling), 104. 
"Conversion of St. Wilfrid," 

33- 
Cooden Beach, 102. 
Corbet, Bishop, 25. 
Court Lodge (Hooe), 99. 
Crest of the Sussex Men, 219. 
Cuthman, Saint, 236. 



D 

De Aquila, Gilbert, in, 136. 
Dew-ponds, 128, 216, 217. 
Ditchling, 179. 
Drake, " Frankie," 69. 
Dudeney, John, 237. 
Dudwell, River, 36. 
"Dymchurch Flit," 16, 66, 107, 
US- 



Eaton's Farm (Hooe), 99. 
" Eddi's Service," 227. 
Egerton, Rev. J. Cocker, 32, 

35. 39,4o, 42. 
Elizabeth, Queen, and Rye, 75. 
Etchingham, 45. 



249 



250 



INDEX 



Fairfield Church, 94, 95. 

Felpham, 221. 

Firebacks of Sussex Iron, 178. 

Firle Beacon, 149. 

Flint Men, Dwellings of, 171. 

Frewen Family, 53, 54, 55. 

" Friendly Brook," 165. 

Fullers of Sussex, 99, 175. 



" Gabriel Old," the Town Bell, 

164. 
Gissing, George, 144. 
"■ Gloriana," 49. 
Glynde, 187. 
Gundrada, 166. 



H 

Haley, William (Sussex Poet), 

221. 
" Hal o' the Draft," 29, 33, 56, 

i73- 
" Hedger and ditcher," 219. 
Henley, W. E., 208. 
Heyshott, 238. 
Hogge, Ralph, 173. 
Hooe, 99. 
Hopley, Rev. H. (Westham), 

119- 
Hudson, W. H., 205. 
Huggett's Furnace, 174. 
Hurdis, John, 160. 
Hurstmonceux, 104. 



Inns, 10. 

Iron Trade of Sussex, 173, 174, 
175, 176. 



James's (G. P. R.) " Robber," 

64. 
James, Henry, and Rye, 77. 
Jefferies, Richard, 206. 
Jennings, Louis, 207. 
Johnson, Doctor, 87. 

K 

" Knife and the Naked Chalk," 
22, 193. 



Lamb Inn (near Hooe), 100. 
Lamberhurst Ale, 3 1 . 
Lees of Warminghurst, 158. 
Lewes, 163 et seq. 
Lewknor, Bunny, 120. 
Little Common, 100. 
Little Linden's Farm, 39. 
Littlington, 145. 
" Looking Glass, The," 52. 
Lucas, Mr. E. V., 181. 

M. 

MacCarthy, Desmond, 14. 
"Maide of Rie " (Old Song), 

142. 
Mayfield, 177. 

" Mermaid Inn," Rye, 78. 
Michelham Priory, 130. 
" Most Sweet Song of an 

English Merchant," 65. 
Mount Caburn, 171. 

N 
" Natural History of Selborne," 

209. 
Newhaven, 153. 
New Inn (Winchelsea), 64. 
Northiam, 49 et seq. 



INDEX 



251 



" Ovingdean Grange," 20 S. 



Pagden, Florence, 148. 

Paine, Tom, 237. 

Pelham, Sir John, 30. 

Pelham, Sir Nicholas, 135, 167. 

Pevensey, ill. 

Pharisees, 17, 24. 

Piddinghoe, 155. 

Poaching, 45. 

Pond-makers on the Downs, 

216. 
Pook's Hill, 33. 

R 

" Records of Bygone Peven- 
sey," 114. 

" Rewards and Fairies," 25 et 
seq. 

Ringmer, 170. 

Ripe, 171. 

Rodwell, 156. 

Rottingdean, 153. 

Rye, 69 et seq. 



Salvington, 207. 

Saint Dunstan, 92. 

Saxon coins, 195. 

Seaford, 135. 

Selden, John, 207. 

Selsey, 227. 

Shakespeare and Sussex dia- 
lect, 220. 

Shepherds, 127, 193. 

Shoesmith Family, 81, 115. 

Shoreham, Henley's Poem on, 
208. 

Silence of the Downs, The, 210. 



" Simple Simon," 69, 79. 
Smuggling, 43 et seq. 
Sompting, 158. 
Southdown Shepherds, 193, 

211. 
South Mailing, 170. 
Springett, Herbert, 167, 171. 
Springett, Ralph, 167. 
" Star Inn," Alfriston, 145, 

187. 
Storrington, 196. 
Sullington, 158. 
" Sussex Folk " (Song by Rev. 

Frewen Aylward), 55. 
Sussex humour and disposition, 

39, 40, 41, 86, 91, 218, 219, 

220. 
Sussex ironmasters, 173. 
Sussex rustics, 219. 
Sussex spirit, The, 168. 
Swinburne, A. C, 204. 



Telscombe, 157. 
Thompson, Francis, 196, 197. 
" Three-Part Song, A.," 82. 
Tipper, Tom, the Newhaven 

brewer, 188. 
" Tree Song," Kipling's, 75. 
Trees of the Weald, 174. 
Turkeys, 57. 



U 



Uckneld, 173. 



W 

Warbleton, 173. 
Warenne Family, 166, 169. 
Warminghurst, 158. 
Wartling, Hill 103. 
Washington, 185. 



252 



INDEX 



Webb, Geoffrey, Mr. (May- 
field), 177. 

" Weland's Sword," 23. 

West Dean, 141. 

Westham, 119. 

Weston, George and Joseph 
(Robbers), 64. 

White of Selbourne, 170, 172. 

Willingford Bridge, 37. 

Wilmington Priory and " Long 
Man," 125, 126. 



Winchelsea, 61. 
" Wiper's»Tower," Rye, 72. 
Woodman, Richard, 173 (foot- 
note), 178. 
" Wrong Thing, The," 167. 



" Young Men at the Manor,'* 
in. 



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